LiveCode Forums.

I need to do a splash screen for a install CD that will play a WMV.

I have seen much talk of playing WMV in a player, but have also seen that it doesn't seem to work in some versions of REV (I think I tested myself in version 2.8.1 and it didn't work right).

So my question is this, does WMV play correctly in a player in either 2.9 or 3.0?

Another option I can think of is playing the WMV in revBrowser, is this a better idea then the player, or are there any downsides?

The player does not play wmv files. Does your video need to be wmv fomat? Can you convert it to something else?

Dear Keyless,

Make sure to read this carefully.

Best,

Mark

mwieder wrote:The player does not play wmv files. Does your video need to be wmv fomat? Can you convert it to something else?

Are you saying this from experiance with 2.9 and 3.o, or because you are not aware of the dontuseQT command and how it uses MCI, that can play WMV?

Mark wrote:Dear Keyless,

Make sure to read this carefully.

Best,

Mark

I read care fully and it doesn't look good for consistant play for 2.9, but the suggested ticket http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=5886 shows completed, Does this mean it works in 3.0?

As shaddy as this is looking, has anyone tried the revbrowser approch to playing WMV? I looks pretty good to me, but wondering if there are any pitfalls.

Maybe Flashplayer with FLV in revBrowser is better option?

I guess my question is this, what would give me the most professional video playback, without having to have the user jump through hoops, getting a strange message or installing QT ?

No, I know about the dontuseqt property - but it's my bad anyway - I was having a refresh problem with rev and after a few tries it worked after all. On Windows anyway - I don't think it can be done on a mac that doesn't have the wmv library for qt installed.

I have too many different codecs installed on my Windows machines to know whether this would work on a more generic system, but at least on WinXP and rev 3.0 it works on my machine.

I think if the target system has trouble playing a wmv file because of codecs not being loaded then you'd have the same problem with revbrowser, but that's off the top of my head without testing.

But still, if I wanted to be really safe about this I'd convert the wmv to a mov file and not worry.

Ah - our messages crossed. I see you don't want to install qt on the target.

mwieder wrote:No, I know about the dontuseqt property - but it's my bad anyway - I was having a refresh problem with rev and after a few tries it worked after all. On Windows anyway - I don't think it can be done on a mac that doesn't have the wmv library for qt installed.

I have too many different codecs installed on my Windows machines to know whether this would work on a more generic system, but at least on WinXP and rev 3.0 it works on my machine.

I think if the target system has trouble playing a wmv file because of codecs not being loaded then you'd have the same problem with revbrowser, but that's off the top of my head without testing.

But still, if I wanted to be really safe about this I'd convert the wmv to a mov file and not worry.

Thanks for the info. Yes this is a Windows only program, I would surely just use quicktime on mac side if I needed to. WMV as a codec is installed on all windows machines to my knowledge, and as it is not just a wrapper like AVI, there should not be any codec conflicts.

I'm actually have been playing around with WMV on a page in revBrowser and am finding that to work pretty well. However if it plays properly in a player in 3.0 I'd upgrade and do it that way. But from reading the ticket Mark S brought up, there is a chance results might be different if user has QT installed or not even though I'm not using QT. Hopefully someone else can chime in on this.

Hi Keyless,

I had severall occasions where a WMV file would play fine on one PC and not at all on another. If you don't have a real, plain old MCI file, then don't expect it to play. Since 99.9%* of today's WMV files are not MCI, I'd go with QuickTime.

Best,

Mark

*) I made up this number ;-)

Mark wrote:Hi Keyless,

I had severall occasions where a WMV file would play fine on one PC and not at all on another. If you don't have a real, plain old MCI file, then don't expect it to play. Since 99.9%* of today's WMV files are not MCI, I'd go with QuickTime.

Best,

Mark

*) I made up this number

MCI is just the controlling mech, and yes it is outdated, but it still exists in Vista. The MCI controls the old WMP(v 6.4 and older) and uses what is known as Video for Windows rather than the DirectShow that the newer player uses. I have no problem playing WMV version 9 (the latest) in Video for Windows as the WMV codec for VFW is updated with WMP.

The notorious VirtualDub actually still uses Video For Windows too, and i have never had a problem with WMV in it. I think Quicktime is actually MCI compatable (at least it used to be) so you actually could control quicktime with MCI too.

It is an outdated tech, and from what I am now hearing there are times when MCI doesn't work (some even think it is computer brand spacific) but if it is working, it should be able to play a proper WMV9 (why you would use anything less would make me scratch my head)

I've decided to go with using revbrowser methode it seems to be reliable, looks proper and functions proper. That is except I can't get rid of an inactive verticle scrollbar, but I'm going to ask about this on this forum.

Also I do hope they fix revBrowser not working right with shaped window.

Thanks to Mark S. and Mark W. for your replies and info.

Just wanted to report another good way of getting a nice video player to play WMV (in it's own window though). Create a html page with embedded player in your editor of choice and set it up to play a video file. Save out the HTML and then change the extension to .HTA. You can launch this HTA from rev and it will start the player in its own nice native looking window. You can customize it to using html and CSS and such and there are also custom settings for the .HTA window, see microsoft msde for those. Works nice and you can also have VBscript or Jscript in the HTA.


also I found out from old metacard FAQ that it does in fact use Video for Windows drivers. These drivers are still used widely and do infact use directshow when needed I believe. I sure hope Rev fixes the players support for thi. I finally got to play around with someones Rev 3.0 and see that I can get WMV (version9) to play wonderfully in the IDE, but they broke when I built standalones. Please fix this Rev....

I confirmed that directshow does infact have a MCI subset so should work with with the player, I remember a stack in Rev onlive that played video with MCI commands, but don't find it now.

I did a little Archive diving and found where Scott R decided to add Video for Windows API support (and considered scrapping it) It was noted then that some of the MCI functionality paid the price from this. Seems MCI calls might be a better option then what seems like very broken Video For Windows support.

Several things I wish for after researching this: That new quicktimes had a silent install. That there never was a video format war in the 90's and quicktime didn't get such a bad rap from Windows tech guys and system admins. (I actually hated QT for a long time for the stupid logo in the system tray and the way WMP and it would battle over which ap was set to open media files.

Probably a bit too much info on this all, I'm just hoping a decent Video choice is added to Rev. (and Please Please make it Flash, seriously flash is a s cross platform as it gets, and H.264 MP4 makes it even compatable with QT.

old article from when directshow was annonced: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:hWH ... d=6&gl=us

Well I'll be, I added:

on Preopenstack
set the dontUseQT to true
set the dontUseQTEffects to true
on preopenstack

to my test stack and had someone create the standalone in 3.0 and it actually plays WMV as a standalone.

My previous test did not include the dontuseQTEffects to true so it must have still been loading QT and effecting the player.

So WMVs do seem to play in standalones made with 3.0

I'll have to try my 2.8.1 with same settings, I know it doesn't work in IDE, but maybe in the standalone it might.

will have to check reliablility on other computers after this.

I suspect Richards reported "can't continue stopped play" might still be a problem.

Keyless,

The problem is not getting a WMV to play. The problem is that not all WMVs will play correctly and some WMVs will play correctly on one but not on another machine. The only format that plays 99% reliably is the MCI compatible format (or whatever you want to call it).

Best,

Mark