QT Player only?

[Klaus Major]

Hi Ken,

> Hi Kurt,
>
>> Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 11:28:06 -0400
>> Subject: QT Player only?
>> From: Kurt Kaufman <kkaufman at snet.net>
>
>> displayed without the flexibility of the player (the controller for
>> starting, pausing, playing only a selection, etc.), but in that case
>> does not rely upon the presence of QuickTime or Windows Media Player,
>> etc.
> ----------
> Hold on, now. I posted a quote from the docs:
>
> "When an audio clip or video clip is playing, a temporary player is 
> created
> for it."
>
> ...I'm surmising that means the VC/AC commands use QT unless 
> don'tUseQT is
> true, in which case it uses the default player on the system.

As already stated in an earlier mail, RR does NEVER USE QT to "play ac 
xxx"!!!

Check it out:

play ac "my.mp3"

Hellish noise is what you get...

You can do some tricky fake by using

play vc "my.mp3"

however ;-)

QT is used for "play vc xyz", if dontuseqt is not set to true.

> So then, it MUST rely on the presence of QT or MP.

Sure, there MUST be some multimedia-layer present to be able to play 
multi media ;-)

And i think that we can relay on that nowadays!

> How about it Rev staff?
> Is that true, or does Rev have its own realtime players or VC's and 
> AC's?
> ----------snip
>> I think that Runtime Revolution's authors are trying to encourage
>> developers to use the player objects rather than importing media.  You
>> certainly can display a much greater variety of file formats using the
>> player object.
> -----------
> Well, RR is still primarily a RAD tool. Consequently, I don't believe 
> the
> use of VC's or AC's is being discouraged at all, e.g., once again, 
> it's just
> a discretional matter of how they will be used. If I want to use clips 
> for
> splash openers, stackwide button sounds, SFX, etc., things that are 
> small
> and unlikely to need updating, then I think importing them is more 
> viable in
> many cases, than pointing to files, because of execution speed and 
> that they
> don't use much memory. They're just clips, as the name implies. If you 
> are
> using QT, you should be able to import and play any filetypes that the
> current onboard version of QT recognizes.

Correct.

The best way is to check for QT ("the qtversion") on preopenstack and 
act accordingly.


I am also sure that there are still many QT version 2.xx on some older 
PC systems.
And that is no good choice for a satisfying AV experience :-)

MP3 are played via QT starting with version 5 (not sure or was it 4?)...
MPG video can be played via QT since version 5...
SWF files are only played WITH SOUND!!! with version <=6 of QT...
CUBIC panoramas require version <=6...

To name the most common formats...

And we can even have these terrific QT transitions in RR.
REAL dissolve, at last ;-)

And many exiting media can only be played with QT, like QTVR or 
interactive QT.

There is not even an equivalent on the win side....

Not to forget this small but very handy QT-only feature called 
"controller" ;-)

> OTOH, IMO, if you have movies or sounds which 1) take too much RAM to 
> be
> practical to be 'embedded', and/or 2) you will need to update, then 
> the file
> method is the way to go.

100% ACK...


> All the best,
> Ken N.

Regards

Klaus Major
klaus at major-k.de
www.major-k.de