QT on Windows

[David Glasgow]

I was just putting the finishing touches to a product for a client  
when, on impulse, I 'sexed it up' with a little .mov in the  
standalone splashscreen. I use playstopped to trigger showing the  
splashscreen proper.  This works fine on Mac, reliably running  
wherever I place the enclosing folder.  The same can't be said for  
Windows. With QT installed, some boxes run it fine, and some don't.   
It sometimes behaves as if the filename of the movie  isn't valid  
even though it is always contained within the same folder, and double  
clicking the movie launches QT as expected.  I don't have time to  
work out why this is the case,  so I decided to just skip the movie  
if it isn't going to run, and show the buttons and information fields  
which form the business end of the splashscreen.  This has proved  
more difficult than I expected.  I use Studio, so I can't debug in  
detail on Windows.

I tried checking 'the movie', but was surprised to obtain 'done' way  
before the movie has stopped playing, and using the done message to  
move on in the splash screen causes the movie to appear and then  
quickly disappear on the Mac.  I thought about 'try-catch' but I am  
not sure what conditions I would be testing for.  I tried  
sidestepping the issue by importing a videoclip in AVI format, but  
the QT codecs for AVI are gruesome.  Also, I couldn't make the  
videoclip play predictably at a specific location, however  
specified.  It always appeared significantly offset.

So this isn't about testing to see if QT is installed, it is (I  
think) about testing whether a player object is able to do its stuff,  
and if not, smoothly moving on with business.  Any suggestions?

(This all goes to confirm rule 437 of software development:  "Never  
sex up a splashscreen on impulse, especially if you have just  
promised to deliver the product within the week")

Oh yes.  Using 2.7.4 on Mac.



Best Wishes,

David Glasgow
Carlton Glasgow Partnership

http://www.i-psych.co.uk