Play button opens video, the opened player closes after 1 minute.

[Surfliquid]

Your question

I upgraded to the beta in hopes it may fix the problem.

I have been licensed since Nov, 2024. So the exact versions aren't too relevant as it has been an issue since I got VideoDownloadHelper.

The issue happens even after fresh install of windows.

I have tried having MPC-BE and VLC as default for .mp4 and both are terminated after 1 minute using the 'play' feature.

Thoughts or suggestions?

Surf

Addon & CoApp version and details

version: 9.5.0.0
target: mozilla
channel: beta
lang: en-US
coapp: {"found":true,"path":"C:\Program Files\DownloadHelper CoApp\vdhcoapp.exe","version":"2.0.19","new_version":false}
license: {"accepted":true,"email":"","key":"c11fc7b9d67a4c11"}
platform: x86-64 win
UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0
{
"valid_license_message_has_been_displayed": true,
"privacy_accept": true,
"used_history_button": true,
"last_download_directory": {
"__serializer_tag": "option_some",
"__serializer_value": {
"__serializer_tag": "primitive",
"__serializer_value": "C:\Users\Surf\Documents"
}
},
"view_options": {
"all_tabs": true,
"low_quality": false,
"sort_by_status": true,
"sort_reverse": false,
"show_button_clean": true,
"show_button_clean_all": false,
"show_button_convert_local": false,
"hide_downloaded": false
},
"use_wide_ui": true,
"use_legacy_ui": false,
"open_count_store": 16,
"successfull_dl": 73

[Mattmjs]

Maybe the file isn't right, what site did you get the video from.

[GrampaWildWilly]

That got me to try something. I usually leave VLC open all the time because I never know when I might want to play something. In that environment, I have never seen the effect you are describing.

But something about your description made me think to close VLC. So the order of events is:

• Close VLC.
• Download something, anything, doesn't matter what, with VDH.
• Click the green button.
• After clicking the green button, take your hands off the keyboard & just wait 1 minute. The web page showing the VDH menu will still be open. VLC will be open in another window but not actually playing the video.

Sure enough, after 1 minute, VLC closes.

But on further digging, if you click the green button when VLC is not open, VLC opens but the video is not queued. I went through the exercise & discovered that if VLC is not already open, yes, the green button in VDH does launch VLC. But the video is not queued for playback. This may be a bug. And it is very strange behavior.

If you click the green button a second time, the video does get queued for playback AND VLC does NOT get killed after 1 minute.

Moral: don't use the green button in VDH. I never do. I just do my downloads & then switch to the file manager. I usually like to look at the file properties before I play the item.

Second moral: have your video player open before you do your downloads. Like I said above, I pretty much always have VLC open. In that scenario, I have never observed this one minute cancellation deal.

The detail missing from your problem description is that you do not have your video player open at the start of your process. Sometimes, what you take for granted is an important detail, more important than you realize. Maybe reading Sherlock Holmes in my childhood actually had an effect.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Meant to ask. What happens if you click the green button in VDH & then go over to the video player & click play? Don't sit & wait. Immediately switch tasks to the video player & click the play button. My experience is that nothing happens because surprisingly, the video is NOT queued. But I haven't tried to click the play the button. I also haven't tested with MPC. If you switch focus away from the page where the VDH menu is open, does the 1 minute kill still happen? Switching focus away from the web page closes the VDH menu. The VDH menu can't be open unless the browser page is in foreground. What happens if you switch focus to another window? I suspect that it doesn't even matter what other window you switch focus to. I also suspect you don't even need to switch focus. I suspect that if you simply close the VDH menu, the 1 minute kill does not happen. Please do these tests & report your findings.

[GrampaWildWilly]

Oh yeah. Forgot to ask another question. How did you determine it was the CoApp that issued the kill request on the video player?

[Surfliquid]

@GrampaWildWilly First I want to thank you for being able to reproduce the 60s force close of the player opened by VDH!
I prefer any attempt to open the player to be a new window/player. I honestly never considered the idea of a queue.
If I were to open 3 files from explorer, I would have 3 media players with each file opened (or the same file if I clicked it 3 times.)
So the first 2 questions of the last 3 don't apply, as I always launch a new process for each video.
There are times when I spawn x number of videos. An example is if I am doing a powershell search files with "matt" in the file name and if mp4, the script will open each found file in a player.
I used sysinternals Procmon.exe and used a bunch of filters and came up with this:
9:55:52.553 PM → vdhcoapp.exe starts.
9:55:53.897 PM → mpc-be64.exe starts, with a parent PID belonging to the coapp chain.
9:56:53.725 PM → vdhcoapp.exe exits. (one minute later)
9:56:53.828 PM → mpc-be64.exe exits almost immediately after the coapp exits.
This is the raw data.
vdhbasicmonitoring.CSV

[GrampaWildWilly]

But I found that the launch of the video player from the green button in VDH is actually spurious. Are you not finding the same thing? That the video player opens but it doesn't play anything because it's been given nothing to play. Is that not what you are observing? You have convinced me the CoApp is doing the close but you haven't covered all the other tests I suggested.

And some of my questions do apply. What happens if you click the green button in VDH & then close the VDH menu? I predict that a fresh video player task will open. I predict that no video will be available in that new instantiation. I predict that the CoApp will not kill that new instantiation after 1 minute. Prove me right or wrong.

Then do the same thing except switch focus away from the Firefox page where you just clicked the green button. What happens in that case? Does the video player still close after 1 minute?

Then do the same thing but click the green button twice. In my case, that actually does give a video to the video player, & the CoApp does not kill that instantiation of the video player. But since you don't use the concept of a queue, I suspect this test won't prove anything on your system. You'll just get a second video player that will close after 1 minute, same as the first one.

In any case, since we have sort of determined that there is a bug in VDH, you need to modify how you operate. You may not want to but you want to avoid the bug, not complain about it until it is fixed. Quit using VDH to launch your video player. Start from the file manager. That works on your system, does it not? So quit doing what doesn't work & just do what works. You have reported the problem. Now just avoid it because you know you can.

[Surfliquid]

I just wanted to let the developers know that it does terminate a spawned process after 1 minute.
If the feature of "Show Download Folder" did "Show in Folder" (open folder and focus on the file,) that would be a great alternative!
Just like you already have the player open, I have the "Download Folder" open.
Example, Chrome & Firefox - They use the "Show in Folder" for downloaded files. When you click it, the downloads folder opens and the focus is on the file downloaded.