play player -- Never MInd!

[Devin Asay]

Okay, chalk it up to advancing years, memory leaks in my brain, or 
whatever. I just checked my lecture notes, and indeed I did teach the 
'start player' form, which is correct. The erroneous 'play player' form 
always gives the result indicated in my original post--the phantom 
"text track" thingy shows up in the middle of the screen. I guess the 
thing that threw me was my student used the incorrect 'play player' 
form in his script, and when I looked at it, the command looked fine to 
my eyes. Flashback to an old HyperCard trip?

So never mind, move along, nothing to see here. Go back to your 
snickering.

Red faced,

Devin

On Mar 31, 2005, at 9:16 AM, I impetuously wrote:

> Okay, yesterday was a reality check for me. Since time immemorial, I 
> have believed that 'play player "myPlayer"' and 'start player 
> "myPlayer"' were synonymous. It may be a relic of using the old HC 
> QuickTime external, when you used 'play movie' to start playing an 
> external movie file. Regardless of the source, I have happily been 
> using play player, and teaching it to my students, since Rev 1.0 
> ***BECAUSE IT WORKED***. Until this week. One of my students showed me 
> a weird problem where his movie would sort of start playing--it would 
> show a still frame of the beginning of the movie, plus pop up a text 
> track movie that contained the name of the player object in the center 
> of the stack window, which then would disappear. I couldn't figure out 
> what was causing this, and finally I resorted to the dictionary to 
> reread the play command entry, which I had read dozens of times. This 
> time it struck me: this command has nothing to do with player objects. 
> It is only the start command that pertains to playing movies inside 
> players.
>
> I suppose this could all be considered a morality play on the dangers 
> of depending on old habits. ;-)
>
> But now the question remains: Why does the play player form even work 
> at all? Does it somehow resolve the reference in the player object as 
> a virtual imported video file?
>
> Confused,
>
> Devin Asay
> Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
> Brigham Young University
>
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>
Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University