player.get_lenght() doesn't give the right value.

[jspking]

Hi, I just started to use python-vlc to implement video playing in my application.

I want to know the length (play time) of a video file. My function looks like below.
self.media is set properly and also I see the video playing. There is a print function in the middle playVideo function. It prints -1 even though there is no problem with playing it.
One strange thing is that some time after I call playVideo(), get_length() returns a right value(play time). Why get_length()'s return value is different?
`

def playVideo(self):
    if self.hasVideo():
        self.player.set_media(self.media)
        if platform.system() == 'Windows':
            self.player.set_hwnd(self.winfo_id())
        else:
            self.player.set_xwindow(self.winfo_id())
        self.player.play()
        print("VLC has video file %d"%self.player.get_length())
        return self.player.get_length()
    else:
        print("VLC media is None...")
        return 0
def mouse_cb(self, event):
    print("movie length: %d, time: %d"%(self.player.get_length(), self.player.get_time()))

`

[oaubert]

The play command launches the playing, which starts by trying to parse the media. But there is a slight delay due to the building of the decoding pipeline, and the play command is asychronous (it returns immediately). So the next command (get_length) does not yet have the information.

You have 2 options: either you check the is_parsed status of the media, and wait for it to become True (easy to implement, but not very clean solution) or you register a handle to the EventType.MediaParsedChanged event, which will get called when the media is actually parsed.

[jspking]

Wow there was a reason why the function returns with different values!!

I just fixed my application to work properly.

Thank you.

[mrJean1]

Just a comment, methods MediaPlayer.get_length() and Media.get_duration() seem to return the same value (in millisecs).