Floating Video Window?

peter.s · Post by **peter.s** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:18 am

Hi There,

I'm playing around with the Video Capture program which comes wit the Revolution Studio tutorials. In it they use a Image rectangle to house the video feed from a webcam. When video is in the rectangle, the video image sits "above" everything else on the screen. I'm guessing this is because the program is referencing pixels on the screen rather than constraints in a field?

Why is it done like this? (a short answer will suffice). Why not use a Player field?

When it is done this way, all new stacks and even the "Save" dialogue for the video stack gets hidden behind the Video rectangle (the one which sheets from the title bar in Mac OS X). Is there any way of "fixing" this - so it doesn't obscure the "Save" dialogue?

Cheers,

P

gyroscope · Post by **gyroscope** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:42 am

Hi Peter

...Studio tutorials. In it they use a Image rectangle to house the video feed from a webcam.

That's a new one for me; I didn't know that could be done... although if you use video in a player, it still will sit above everything else. There is a keyword to allow graphics to appear in front of it though but a) I can't find it in the Dictionary again and b) I couldn't get it to work at the time...

Hmm, hope that's some sort of help...

Edit: at least putting the video in a player makes it appear above all else in the Rev stack/app only and not above all other app windows (if I've understood you correctly here...)

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:12 pm

Hi P,

Actually, video form both cam and files is displayed in a special child window. This child window is so special that it causes a few problems that cannot be solved. I believe there are several bug reports on this in the QCC.

Best,

Mark

peter.s · Post by **peter.s** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:40 am

Hi Mark and Gyroscope,

If I play a video file in a player, it seems to behave like one would expect. It seems to be a part of the stack and doesn't float above other stacks. It's when the video is in the "rectangle" (child window?) that it behaves like this - at least on my Mac OS 10.4.11.

If I check "Float Above Everything" in the properties window of the other stack, it will float above the video, but then the other stack becomes Modal - which I don't want.

Is it then possible to feed a webcam to a Player field? If so how so?

Cheers,

Peter

Oh - What's the QCC?

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:35 am

Hi Peter,

It was possible to display iSight in a QuickTime player, using Mac OS X 10.4.x, but it no longer works with 10.5.

QCC is the quality control centre, formerly known as Bugzilla.

Best regards,

Mark

bn · Post by bn » Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:37 am

Hi Gyroscope

That's a new one for me; I didn't know that could be done... although if you use video in a player, it still will sit above everything else. There is a keyword to allow graphics to appear in front of it though but a) I can't find it in the Dictionary again and b) I couldn't get it to work at the time...

if you set the alwaysbuffer of a player to true then you can display graphics on top of the player. The downside of this is that the controller doesnt work anymore and you have to script your own controller.
That can be easily done with a scrollbar -> slider and 2 buttons.

for the buttons
start player "p1"
and
stop player "p1"

You set the the endvalue of the scrollbar to the duration of the movie in the player

script of the scrollbar could be

----------
on mouseDown pMouseBtnNum
set the endvalue of scrollbar "S1" to the duration of player "p1"
end mouseDown

on scrollbarDrag pScrollValue
set the currenttime of player "p1" to pScrollValue
end scrollbarDrag
------------------

the thumb of the player controller doesnt change position when the alwaysbuffer is true so I would set the showcontroller of the player to false since you use your own controller anyways.

regards

Bernd

bn · Post by bn » Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:09 pm

Hi Mark,

It was possible to display iSight in a QuickTime player, using Mac OS X 10.4.x, but it no longer works with 10.5.

the example stack 'Video Capture' in -> resources -> Sample Projects works for me with the built-in iSight. Rev 2.9 System 10.5.4 Quicktime 7.5 MacBook Pro.

It would be a pitty if this beautiful example would not work.

regards

Bernd

gyroscope · Post by **gyroscope** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:16 am

Thank you for clearing that one up for me, Bernd.

(I see now that alwaysbuffer isn't enough on its own...)

Hope you didn't mind the slight diversion to your thread, Peter!

peter.s · Post by **peter.s** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:20 am

No, not at all - it's always good to learn something.

P

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:57 am

Bernd,

As I tried to make clear in my earlier posts, Revolution's video grabber uses its own child window and no player object!

Mark

bn · Post by bn » Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:17 am

Mark,

shure enough, I got mixed up.

thanks for putting me back on track.

cheers

Bernd