Movie problems in LiveCode

[Richard Gaskin]

stgoldberg wrote:

 > Thanks for the suggestion Jacquie.  Unfortunately, the problem with
 > relative paths resetting to absolute remains
 > even if “always use absolute file paths for images” is unchecked.
 >  There appears to be a true problem with movies in the LC 6-7 series
 > on Macintosh. It appears impossible to set a relative movie path on
 > the Macintosh in the LC 6-7 series, and thus in Macintosh builds for
 > Windows, the player movies will not play.

What is the value of "the result" immediately after your "play" command? 
  It may also help to add a call to sysError there, e.g.:

   play tSomeFile
   if the result is not empty then
      answer the result &" ("& sysError() &")"
   end if

My hunch is that the result will say something about the media being 
non-initializable, and sysError will return 2, for "file not found".

You could double-check that the default directory is correct at the 
moment that call is made, but it may be that the newer APIs simply don't 
allow partial file paths anymore, that the developer is expected to 
resolve those to full paths before calling the OS routines that play them.

I don't know for sure, but I've always been wary of shipping things that 
rely on relative paths, since any other script can change the default 
directory out from under me at any time.

In apps where the media I'm playing resides in a single folder, I often 
just have a central handler cover that to which I pass the file's short 
name only and it takes care of the rest, e.g.:

on PlayMovie pFile
   put specialFolderPath("documents")&"/MyApp/media/"& pFile into tPath
   if there is not a file tPath then
      answer "Media file missing: "& tPath
      exit to top
   end if
   play tPath
end PlayMovie

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com