Autoplay an MP4 video on a CD

[StuartR]

I received the following request from a friend (via email) and I don't have a clue! Can anyone offer advice.

I have a mixed mode CD Rom which contains an MP4 video file and a series of audio tracks.

I want it to automatically play the video file (not the audio session) when it is inserted in a PC (assuming that auto play hasn't been user disabled)

I don't need fancy graphics or menus - I just want the video to play in the default media player on that machine.

It would be nice if the solution was compatible with 7/Vista/XP at least.

I assumed that there would be straightforward way of doing this with an autorun.inf file but it would seem that it is a little more complicated than that. Extensive googling has turned up endless apps that will build a fancy menu but nothing that will just do the simple job required.

[Hey Jude]

One possibility is have you considered splitting the MP3 audio from the MP4 video? There is a program called
Dvd Video Cutter Joiner Freeware
which looks like it could handle that job. Then you would just reburn the CD and make sure the auto play is set up properly.

"Video Cutter is a very simple tool that can cut any video in almost any format easily. It supports MPG, VOB, DAT, AVI, DIVX, MP4, WMV, MOV, MKV, FLV and other video formats.- All you need to do is play the video."

[StuartR]

Could you please explain how splitting the audio from the video would help.

[Hey Jude]

Could you please explain how splitting the audio from the video would help.

It's the reverse of having MP3 files you wish to add to an MP4 (AVI Youtube) Video. You must merge them so they both play together. In your friend's case, he has an MP4 which he only wants to view without any of the audio tracks playing. So you separate them thru a software program, then you take the Video that is left and burn that to a new CD which will play in the default video player of a machine of their choice. DO I understand correctly that the video hasn't any sound and the additional sound tracks that are on the CD are what would be split?

I was trying to d/l a YouTube video and convert it to MP4 to try it out. I've been tied up, but that is the concept.

[Hey Jude]

SO to try this out, I d/l that program. Then I went to YouTube and used YouTube downloader HD and d/l Beatles Birthday Song and used Video Cutter to convert it to an MP4. Very well it did that. (Your friend already has an MP4) I found another program called Free Audio Extractor that extracted the MP3 from the Beatles song and saved it to a WMP file and WMP played it! That is the concept. I had to d/l and install a K-Lite Codec Pak as well, but it's all cool. I've been fooling around with this myself and saw your post so thought I would add FWIW. It can be done, but perhaps not as simply as just inserting a CD and playing it unless he wants to mute the audio. There are programs that do that as well.

[HansV]

Hey Jude, I don't think Stuart's friend wants to extract audio from the .mp4 video - he (or she) wants the video to play automatically when the CD is inserted.

Stuart, would adding a ShellExecute line to the [autorun] section of AutoRun.inf help? It would look like

shellexecute=myvideo.mp4

or

shellexecute=mysubfolder\myvideo.mp4

with the appropriate path and filename substituted. This relies on the user having associated the .mp4 extension with a media player that is capable of playing .mp4.

[jaystarter]

Hey Jude, I don't think Stuart's friend wants to extract audio from the .mp4 video - he (or she) wants the video to play automatically when the CD is inserted.

Stuart, would adding a ShellExecute line to the [autorun] section of AutoRun.inf help? It would look like

shellexecute=myvideo.mp4

or

shellexecute=mysubfolder\myvideo.mp4

with the appropriate path and filename substituted. This relies on the user having associated the .mp4 extension with a media player that is capable of playing .mp4.

Poking my nose in where I have no right to but... on a similarish thing (I think) whereby someone wanted to put a copy of a website on a CD to autoplay when inserted to computer, the suggestion was to create a BAT file with the auto.inf. All beyond me but maybe this will give you a clue? Please delete this post if it has no benefit or just confuses the discussion

Re: Putting a website onto CD

OK i was right after all, here is what you need to do.

Using a text editor first make the autorun.inf file, create a new text document and add the following lines to it

[autorun]
open=autorun.bat

Now save this file as autorun.inf to somewhere on your PC

Again open up another new text document and add the following code to it

@echo Loading CD
@start index.html
@cls
@exit

Now save this file as autorun.bat
You would then need to make sure that all your html files are in the root of the CD and not located in a folder (the images and scripts folders are fine to ship over to the CD as they are) and then when burning to the CD make sure you add the 2 files of autorun.inf and autorun.bat files to the same location (the root) as your html files.

Now load the burnt CD to your CD Drive and hey presto, the site will load

[StuartR]

...
shellexecute=myvideo.mp4
...

Thanks. sorry for not responding sooner but I have been out all afternoon.

I read up on autorun.inf syntax this morning, and then sent him a very similar suggestion. He replied by sending me the autorun.inf he is using, which did include this, but also included lots of other lines, one of which was.

UseAutoPlay=1

According to this MSDN article on autorun entries the effect of this will be to prevent the shellexecute line from running.

I have written to suggest that he deletes this line and we will see what happens.

[StuartR]

Just to finish this one.

Removing UseAutoPlay=1 from his autorun.inf caused the CD to behave properly.

[HansV]

Great - thanks for the update!