AVI/WMV Playback Control?

[Chipp Walters]

Peter,

WMV doesn't have a typical notion of keyframes, that is one of the 
reasons why you have so much trouble using it. In fact, the same is true 
with many video editors when trying to edit a WMV clip. Which is why you 
edit AVI's not WMVs.

Even MS's own MediaPlayer cannot randomly seek through a streaming WMV.

If you're looking for a digital format which plays back on both 
platforms, consider DivX. It will playback in WindowsMedia player on 
PC's and in Quicktime on Macs (assuming the correct codecs are 
installed). While it's not too efficient at streaming, the 
compression/quality tradeoffs are superb. An added benefit is that many 
of the new DVD players and all of the new portable personal video 
devices play DivX as well.

If I were creating a video project in RR, I would download the .avi 
files in the background, and play them after they were successfully 
downloaded. Note, using DivX, you can still play .avi files on a Mac.

best,
Chipp

Peter Reid wrote:

> I'm trying to allow the user of a stack playing both AVI and WMV video 
> clips to move a scrollbar to adjust the playback position of a clip.  I 
> do this by adjusting the currentTime property of the player object that 
> is pointing at an AVI/WMV file.  However, whenever I do "start player 
> thePlayer", it ALWAYS restarts the playback at the BEGINNING of the clip 
> irrespective of the setting of the currentTime property?!
> 
> Any ideas for why this happens and how I can work around this so the 
> user can really control the playback position of AVI/WMV files (i.e. 
> without QuickTime)?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Peter