Fast forward and rewind

[DanceParty]

I figured a way to implement a rewind and fast forward. It's quite tedious but I figure I would explain and see if there is a better way.

I have an MPEG1 movie playing. I want to fastforward and rewind 10 seconds each time its pressed. So If my movie is 60 seconds I have 5 images for fast forward. The first one is visible and seeks 10, then it gets hidden and the second one shows and that seeks 20, etc.

Q1? Can I make a variable that seeks %MyVariable% which I can add 10 to each time an object is clicked?

Q2? Can I find out how long a movie is within the program and set it to a variable? I have at least 10 movies in a program and need to quickly change them for another project.

Any thoughts?

Just to add - I figured out that I can use a variable but there is a problem. I seek to %seek% + 10 but if you watch the movie for a while, you cant seek 10 from where you are unless there is a way to find the seconds that has been played. Without that it goes back to 10 seconds in the beginning of the movie.

[TJ_Tigger]

Re: Fast forward and rewind

is there a way to get the current position in seconds of the file as it is playing and assign it to a variable? If you could do that, you could then add/subtract 10 seconds to it to make it fast forward or rewind. But I don' t know if you can get the current time from the movie as it plays.

On another note, could you record in a variable the time when the movie starts (when the person clicks play) and when the button is pressed, compare the current time to the time when it started. Do some math between the two and take the resulting value and add/subtract 10 seconds to it and seek the new position. You would then have to adjust the initial variable by 10 seconds as well so the current time would remain the same. This could get tricky if you have pause buttons. You would have to do some calculations on the variable when it is paused and then started again from the current position. That too could be stored in a variable and an IF statement on the play button could look for that variable before setting the current time.

Just a theory. It would all have to be worked out of course.

Let me know what you think of it.

[Lorne]

Re: Fast forward and rewind

Getting the current position of a Media Player Object isn't possible, but it's an excellent suggestion. I've logged it in our suggestions database.

[DanceParty]

Re: Fast forward and rewind

If that happens I have 2 concerns/requests

If the value returned is in the hh:mm:ss format, then there needs to be a way to manipulate that. Say maybe an hour value, minute value, and second value. If someone wants to display that they can make a string like %hour% & ":" & %minute% & ":" & %Second%

Also, with that information, there sould be a way to create a customizable progress bar that is movable w/o flash. most of my users do not have a flash player and I dont want them to have to install anything to see my CD. The windows media player one is way to nasty to use.

[eric_darling]

Re: Fast forward and rewind

Let me append to your suggestion by adding a variable for frames (the final two digits in the timecode). That would be %Frame%. This would be an important variable in certain circumstances, where audio cuts in or out by using only a more coarse %Second% method.