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QuickTime, Director & Lingo by Matt Ottewill

What is QuickTime?

Don't know what QuickTime is? Click here ...

Tutorial movies

This Director file demonstrate many of the techniques described on this page.

download iconQT video control tutorial movie (.dir)

Checking for QuickTime

If you use QuickTime video in your project you might want to check that the end user has an adequate version installed. The following script alerts a user that they need to update the installed version if it's older than version 4 ...

if quickTimeVersion() < 4 then
member("QuickTimeVersion feedback text").text = string("You have an old version of QuickTime and need to install an up-to-date version before you continue.")
end if

Movietime property

Director's Movietime property returns the current position or time (elapsed), of a QuickTime video clip in ticks (60 per second). Movietime can be retrieved and set.

In this equation, movietime is divided by 60 to produce a result in seconds.

member("counter").text = string (sprite(1).movietime / 60 & " seconds elapsed")

MovieRate property

The MovieRate property controls the speed of playback of a QuickTime video sprite.

movierate = 1 ..... Normal speed

movierate = -1 ..... Play backwards

movierate = 2 ..... Double speed

movierate = -8 ..... Fast rewind

... and so on.

QuickTime VR Lingo

Director can act on Hotspots embedded into QTVR movies.

When making a QuickTime VR scene, make a note of the ID numbers of any Hotspots you have created which you want to link to elements in Director.

After you have imported/linked your completed QTVR scene into Director you will need to create 2 scripts.

QTVR scene sprite scripts

Attach this to you QTVR sprite ...

on mouseDown
sprite(the currentSpriteNum).triggerCallback = #HotSpotCallback
end

Put this in a Movie Script ...

on HotSpotCallback me, hotspotID
if hotspotID = 59 then go to frame 20
if hotspotID = 253 then set the stageColor = random(255)
end

In this example 59 and 253 were generated randomly within QuickTime VR Authoring Studio.