Playing video within stacks on Linux

[Warren Samples]

On 12/13/2013 07:54 PM, Alejandro Tejada wrote:
> Warren Samples wrote
>> Video playback is a mess under Linux.
>> We are eagerly awaiting the new
>> multimedia object!
>> [snip]
>
> Hi Warren,
>
> What is your experience using shell commands
> to control a video player?
>
> This works from the message box:
>
> shell("mplayer -ontop -noborder -geometry 50%:50%  myvideo.mp4")
>
> but I have not found a way to pause, stop, move forward or backward,
> change volume, etc, after the movie have started playing.
> It´s necessary to wait until the movie plays completely to issue
> another shell command... :(
>
> Notice that you could use vlc in the same way, and vlc already
> shows all controls inside the video windows, but LiveCode does not
> respond to any command until VLC is closed (not simply stopped).
>
> Does exists some way to control with precision these video players
> (using shell or other method) within LiveCode?
>
> Al
>
>


You can run mplayer in slave mode and control it with LiveCode writing 
to the FIFO.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/tech/slave.txt

Because shell() is blocking, you probably want to use an independent 
process to open mplayer using -slave. I once spent some time exploring 
this. You have to take precautions to make sure you don't leave a bunch 
of mplayer instances open when you're done. I couldn't get embed to work 
to attach mplayer to a LiveCode window, but this didn't appear to be a 
LiveCode issue per se since it was very fickle about attaching to other 
application windows as well.

If you don't mind having mplayer open in an independent window, this may 
be a good option.

Warren