Livecode, Quicktime, and Snow Leopard

[jrioux]

I'm puzzled. I've been working on a Mac app which uses a player object. All was well in development (player played, tracks faded in and out via the Enhanced Quicktime External, life was good.) I happened to have both Quicktime X and Quicktime 7 (pro) on my development machine. However, when I created the standalone and tested it on two other Macs running Snow Leopard, the player did not work. I subsequently discovered that Snow Leopard uses Quicktime 7 for the types of call Livecode sends, so I installed QT 7 on the new machine. No dice. I then thought maybe only the QT7 player had been installed, not the "framework" (though I don't pretend to know exactly what that is anyway... a library, I believe). Then I read that Snow Leopard itself uses the QT7 framework APIs when its own QTX doesn't suffice, so the framework is already there even if the QT7 player hasn't been added.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The short of it is, does Livecode work on Snow Leopard if QT7 is not installed? If not, what do we need to tell our customers to do to be sure our app will work on their systems?

[Mark]

the player did not work

This is insufficient information.

Kind regards,

Mark

[wsamples]

The player works in 10.6 with QT X, without QT 7 installed. Just did it here. Perhaps it's a codec issue? Is the QT External properly included in the finished standalone?

[jrioux]

Thanks for the responses. I do appreciate them.

the player did not work

What I meant was that the application started up fine, and I was able to navigate from page to page fine also, but the opening video did not load or play, nor did the second (background) player play the audio.

I'm even more puzzled now, however, for two reasons (which may help solve the problem).

One is that I wrote up a very simple app (load and play a Quicktime movie in a player, no enhanced external, two cards) and had the same problem. (The problem's not the external, then, or not solely.)

The second is that the compiled apps play fine on my development machine (which means it does work, as the next person says). I cannot for the life of me figure out what's different between the two machines.

Could it be that, for some reason, the app is not finding the movie files? I included them in the non-stack files when I compiled, and they are there in the package when I examine its contents. And (as I said) the compiled versions work great on the development machine. Perhaps the fileName references used by Livecode got mixed up as I transferred them to the new machine? I copy the compiled app to the new machine via a thumb drive after zipping it.

[wsamples]

What codec does this file require? Will the file play in QuickTime in the other machines? My guess is that it uses a codec you've installed on your own machine but isn't installed in the others.

[jrioux]

wsamples,

The Quicktime files play fine on the target machine separately from the application (I can open the app's package, locate and double-click the movie file, and Quicktime will play it just fine).

As I mentioned above, the Enhanced Quicktime external is not the sole problem (if it is a problem at all), because: 1) the compiled apps work fine on the development machine, and 2) I run into the same problem on the target machine even with apps not using the external.

[Dixie]

jrioux...

I think that you have a path problem...

Code: Select all

on preOpenStack
   set itemDel to "/" 
   set the defaultfolder to item 1 to -2 of (the effective fileName of this stack)
end preOpenStack

on openStack
   set the filename of player 1 to "./myMovieName.mp4"
end openStack

Try this and see if it works for you both from the IDE and as a standalone...

be well,

Dixie

[Klaus]

Hi jriuox,

I also suspect a file path problem.
Please post (some of) your code where you set the filename.

The Enhanced QT External is definitvely NOT involved with this problem!


Best

Klaus

[jrioux]

Dixie and Klaus,

Yes, many thanks. I neglected to check "Copy Referenced Files" in the standalone settings, so the pathnames I entered (not in code, but through the IDE) were absolute. No wonder it played on the development machine but not the target machines!

But that is not the whole of it. I re-compiled with the appropriate settings, and the first player opens and plays fine. However, the one which utilizes the Enhanced Quicktime external hangs while it goes searching for individual tracks of a multi-track Quicktime movie, by name, no less. (I nowhere refer to the tracks by name.)

Looks like I have some more experimenting to do...

[jrioux]

Another odd thing. I created my Quicktime movies using QT 7. But QT X takes very long to open such files, so I decided to save them using QT X. The file went from about 20 (QT 7) to over 70 MB (QT X).

[jacque]

However, the one which utilizes the Enhanced Quicktime external hangs

That's expected, since LiveCode 4.6.1 does not yet support externals. They are due very soon though, the next version will have it, and that version is in the final testing stages right now.

[Klaus]

That's expected, since LiveCode 4.6.1 does not yet support externals.

Madame???

[jacque]

Oops. He wasn't talking about mobile, was he. Sorry about that.

[Klaus]

No, he wasn't