How to Open 3rd Party Media App to Play MPEG?

[pcc]

I'm trying to migrate my autorun projects from CDA (Compact Disc Autorun) to AutoPlay Media Studio (AMS). But, I'm stuck.

How do I:

Assign a button to (1) open an external media application (Media Player Classic) that I intend to include in my CDR to (2) open and play a MPEG1 movie file on the CDR (3) in full screen mode and then (4) close the media application (Media Player Classic)?

Notes:
*Media Player Classic is a flexible open source Media Player based on Media Player 6.4.
*I want to use Media Player Classic and not have to rely on Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

[Lorne]

Re: How to Open 3rd Party Media App to Play MPEG?

Create the button, using a text object or an image object or such, and then add some actions to its On Click event.

To launch Media Player Classic, you'll want to use a File.Execute action. Just pass the path to your video as a command line argument. You can use the %SrcDrv% or %AppDir% variables in the path (see the help file for more info). To make the player go full screen, use whatever command line switch MPC provides.

Closing the player after it's done is a bit trickier...check to see if MPC has a command line switch to make it close when the movie's done. If that's the case, it's a piece of cake...just tell the File.Execute action to wait for the program to return before proceeding. (If not, you'll have to figure out some way to watch for the end of the movie, either by using a timer of some sort, or polling the window title, or something.)

[pcc]

Re: How to Open 3rd Party Media App to Play MPEG?

Thanks for your pointers Lorne. I got it working quick and perfect now.

For those interested in making a autorun menu for VCD/SVCDs, here are the steps:

***Start of Guide***
Guide Title: Autorun for VCD/SVCD (brought to you by pcc and Lorne) Version 1.0

Steps:
1. Design your menu in AMS4.
2. Assign to the Play button or to a Clickable image the following File Execute command:

<FileName>%SrcDir%\MPLAYERC.EXE</FileName>
<CommandLine>Play.m3u /fullscreen /close</CommandLine>

3. Create a txt file and type into the txt file the directory where your *.MPG or *.DAT file is located (e.g., mpegav\avseq01.dat) and save the txt file by calling it Play.m3u.
4. Build your AMS project and hold on to these autorun files.
5. Download Media Player Classic.
6. Encode your video into MPEG format with Tmpgenc.
7. Load your MPEG file into VCDEasy 1.15 (last free uncrippled version) and add in your autorun files, your Play.m3u file, and MPLAYERC.EXE (Media Player Classic) to the main directory of your VCD/SVCD. Now, create your VCD/SVCD image files (*.bin and *.cue) in VCDEasy.
8. Burn your VCD/SVCD image files with Nero. Done!


Now when someone clicks on the button/image on your autorun menu, it will play your movie at full screen and close it movie when finished.

Enjoy!


Notes:
Tmpgenc is available at Tmpgenc.net.
Media Player Classic is available at doom9.net.
Do a google search for VCDEasy 1.15.
*Feel free to distribute this guide freely and not for profit but please do not change it in any way.

***End of Guide***

[Lorne]

Re: How to Open 3rd Party Media App to Play MPEG?

Too cool, pcc! I've been wondering if that would work for a while now.