Movie problems in LiveCode

[Devin Asay]

On Mar 30, 2015, at 6:00 AM, stgoldberg at aol.com wrote:

> I do not know why we’re getting such different results. On Mac version 10.9.5, using LC 7.0.3, if I write the following script in the openCard handler:
> 
> on openCard
> set the filename of player 1 to “media/mymovie.mov”
> answer the filename of player 1
> end openCard
> 
> then, while the movie will show in the player, I get the absolute path as an answer to the filename, rather than the relative path. This is confirmed by opening up the movie player property inspector and finding the absolute path in the fileName field (in my case, /Users/stephengoldberg/Desktop/Script words/Media/myMovie.mov)

The behavior of player objects vis-a-vis  relative paths has definitely changed in 6.7 and higher, as detailed in the bug report I posted a few days back. (http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14435). There is apparently a fix of some kind due out in one of the next builds.

In the meantime, or perhaps as a best practice, it seems like instead of setting the players filename property to a relative path (which *should* work but doesn’t), you should do this:

  set the filename of player 1 to the defaultFolder & “/media/mymovie.mov”

Or use whatever full file path is appropriate:

  set the filename of player 1 to specialFolderPath(“Documents”) & “/media/mymovie.mov”


Interestingly, in my own development work, it turns out I always use this method, and like Jacque, don’t have the problem Stephen is reporting. But in my teaching I have often demonstrated the technique of setting the defaultFolder to say, the parent folder of the mainstack, and setting the filename property to a relative path, like Stephen does. It was as I was testing this technique for a recent class that I discovered the change in behavior, which broke this capability in 6.7.x

Devin


Devin Asay
Office of Digital Humanities
Brigham Young University