Blender 2.59 doesn't support playback?

[bnewton81]

I have already tried posting this question in the blender forums, but they were no help.http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?230017-Blender-won-t-play-animations&p=1940694&highlight=#post1940694 I can't play back rendered animations in blender 2.59. It's as if the script that tells it how to do playback is broken, or the player isn't there; but it is there. That is the only problem I'm having with 2.59. The glitch I'm having with 2.49, which I've already posted about http://forum.guildofwriters.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5390 makes using 2.49 very frustrating and I only use it to render animations/make export age tests. I've tried uninstalling all blender programs and reinstalling using all the defaults... no effect.

[tachzusamm]

Since noone seems to know a solution, I'll try to step in and just throw a few cents, although I never really used it.

First, the "blenderplayer.exe" is *not* for playing videos - it's for playing blender files (a blender game-engine standalone).
Second, to play video files, you have to setup an *external* video player under user preferences -> file -> Animation Player.
So I think setting the field to custom instead of Blender 2.4, and choosing a path to your external player, should help.

The player must of course support the video format you are going to export.

[bnewton81]

what does blender 2.49 use as a player? I've never had to do this before. So you're saying that blender doesn't have a built in animation player? Thanks for responding to the post. It is a very odd and frustrating problem, but I found another forum post on blender's site about this issue. Seems that this is very uncommon and no one really knows what is causing it.

[bnewton81]

Just made a video of the problem. Maybe it will shed some light.

[bnewton81]

Just made a video of the problem. Maybe it will shed some light. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6uVg-L5UDA

[tachzusamm]

Okay, seems I was not too clear in my explanations.

Let me repeat, hopefully more clear this time:

First let's have a look at the message you get. You get "Blender 2.59 does not support playback". So, we can assume that, you may guess it, that Blender 2.59 does not support playing back animations.
Good to know, but what a pity. Blender 2.49 did support it. Okay, what can we do?

Let's have a look at what the "Play Rendered Animation Ctrl F11" buttons tells us.

It says:

external.png (7.39 KiB) Viewed 8003 times

Plays back rendered frames/movies using an EXTERNAL player.

Nice. Now we could assume that using an external player will help.

But - which player could we enter into the path field we see in the user preferences page?

pathtoplayer.png (8.79 KiB) Viewed 8003 times

Wait... why can't we use just Blender 2.49 because this version already had no problems playing files?

So, let's browse to the blender.exe in our Blender 2.49 installation and use this application for playing our animations:

pathexample.png (6.11 KiB) Viewed 8003 times

Sounds logical that at least we have to tell Blender 2.59 where we installed our old Blender 2.49, no? How should it know it otherwise, because there could be so many debug builds or testing/older/newer versions of Blender, and just guessing which application could be our intended blender.exe would be really dangerous.

I think this should be the complete description now.

~Tach

[bnewton81]

holy crap! Are you telling me all I have to do is point it to 2.49? 2.59 did play animations fine until I downloaded the "stable" version. That's what made me think that it was just a bug, and why I never took that message for being true. I'm currently learning 3ds because of these little blender pissoffs. 3ds is sooooooo different. Feels like I'd need another lifetime to learn it. I will not give up though; too hard headed for that. Thanks yet again Tach!

[bnewton81]

Thanks so much Tach! It worked. I can't believe it was such a simple issue. More so, I can't believe that no one else could tell me this 2 months ago. Google "blender doesn't playback animations". You will see that I have posted in everyone. I started most of the threads. Thanks again m8.

[tachzusamm]

holy crap! Are you telling me all I have to do is point it to 2.49?

Umm... yes. But I could not resist to make a story out of it.

I'm currently learning 3ds because of these little blender pissoffs.

Weren't you the person who stated "Blender Says Freedom"?
Come on, Blender still IS the better package in my opinion. Good to hear that you don't give up (whatever package you meant).

[Luna]

Well, it does say "external" player, they give you the freedom to choose. I would actually use VLC(it has a Cone icon! and sort of plays every video/music file in existence) myself.