I know most everyone is forcing users to download entire movies before starting players set to http refs... but I would like things to be a bit more dynamic.
Can players be hooked to libURL such that set the filename of player "remoteMovie" to "http://www.domain.org/movies/greatestShowOnEarth.mov"; would "emulate" a load cmd so that we have access to the URLstatus for that player's download? Goal: One would like to present a progress bar to users, that could poll URLstatus for the player's call to a remote URL... after all it would seem that setting the player's filename to an http ref is the same "animal" as a load url call. I'm finding pretty consistently that any movie that has been exported with "Fast Start Header" but *not" compressed hearders and no hinting (we aren't using QT streaming on one server) will, even in a non-streaming environment, begin to display frames as soon as enough data has been buffered. but, it varies, for reasons I cannot fathom, from one movie to the next..as to the time that passes before the movie begins, I suspect differences in bandwidth and data rates. We need something like "Please be patient... downloading movie...." numbers and real time frames if known would be even better "Your movie will start in 1 minute 32 seconds". And a call back would be marvelous because you could let the user go do something else and then "ring" them: "You movie has begun" and then present them the player again, with the moving just started. even if it has not been all downloaded yet, but enough data has arrived to start the movie. There would need to be some feedback in the API between Rev and Quicktime... possibly as simple as polling the current time, which will be "stuck" at 0, even if you have started the player... until enough data has arrived and it begins... hmmm. maybe that itself is a half-baked solution....I'll test it.. I discovered a simple trick which cured my previous problems: you can let a movie dynamically be changed and set another movie on the same card. The problems related to a) leaving players with a file name set... *always* set the filename to empty on closing the card... (otherwise when you go back to the card the player initiates a download of the previous filename it was set to and save with .."duh" b) for rapid switching, instead of stop the player and resetting it: just delete it and create a new one this is a) simple and b) so far proving quite robust... set a field with URLs to different media types, lock it and bangaway on the lines as fast as you can, with this in the field script: on mouseup set the alwaysBuffer of the templatePlayer to false set the showcontroller of the templatePlayer to true put value (the clickline) into tUrl set the defaultstack to "Check Media" # just a separate window for movie display lock screen open stack "Check Media" delete player "mediaCheck" create player "MediaCheck" set the filename of player "MediaCheck" to tUrl set the top of player "MediaCheck" to 10 unlock screen start player "MediaCheck" end mouseup It works pretty well... I note that iTunes has moved away from sending people to a browser page to watch a movie. It is doing some wierd thing where it calls the browser and then redirects you back to the iTunes interface... I don't know what that's all about...why they need to invoke your browser at all.. doesn't make sense... But it is more and more trying to be the robust remote desktop client app that Rev is already good at. But Apple's implementation is, surprisingly, pretty "wonky" if I click on a HD 1080 version of a trailer, sure, it takes up the width of my screen, but just stops and hangs, while waiting for more data... leaving the user in that anxious state of unknowing if his system is hung, or what... I would think if we can hook players to libURL we can offer a sweeter user interface... btw: Adobe's interactive PDF's are even worse... you *can* set a movie frame to a remote URL and it might or it might not work, and Acrobat officially does not support such http feeds to movie frames, you must either embed (ridiculous for a PDF that's trying to show, say a 50 megabyte 20 movie) or call the movie from the local harddrive. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
