Quicktime COM trouble

[james3mg]

I'm hoping someone out there who has done more work with Quicktime's COM objects can give me a hand:

The long-range goal is to be able to tell how long a move or audio file is, in minutes and seconds.

kjactive's post at http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...st&p=114957 got me going, but I first had to play around until I found that my computer required a different number at the end of the appname.objectype string: he used Quicktime.Quicktime.4, and I need to use Quicktime.Quicktime.5 or .6 on my machine. Since I want to distribute the completed script this will be a part of, I decided to make sure I can get the right number on each computer with:

For $i=@YEAR-1996 To 1 Step -1;should be safe in trying all possible versions - installs from 2007 are only version 5 or 6, and this would check up through 11.
    $QTobj=ObjCreate("QuickTime.QuickTime."&$i)
    If NOT @error Then ExitLoop
Next
If NOT IsObj($QTobj) Then
    MsgBox(16,"Error","You need to have Quicktime on this computer to use this program")
    Exit
EndIfoÝ÷ ÚÊßÙejÊÆ޺ȧØ^ßÙZµë-ßÛޮȨø§víç(­z·(è]4ÓK)j{-ÊWoÝ÷ ÙDK¡»â¢ë%Éö¤zÚ7öZwmæ®v*WÁ©í¶!yÉ-éàzÛbazh§º×¬jwlyÊ'vˬxºÚ"µÍÌÍÓ[ÝIÌÍÔUØÙ]][Û
KÉÌÍÔUØÙ][YTØØ[J
BÌÍÓ[Z[QÛÜ ÌÍÓ[ÝÍ
BÌÍÓ[ÙXÏTÝ[
    ÌÍÓ[ÝJ

ÛÜ    ÌÍÓ[ÝÍ
JJJBÛÛÛÛUÜ]J   ÌÍÓ[Z[[É][ÝÎ][ÝÉ[ÉÌÍÓ[ÙXÉ[ÐÔ

...it comes out perfectly. The problem is that I want to be able to find the length of a file that's on the local computer! The audio file is in the same folder as the script, so I've tried:

.SetUrl("file.m4a")
.SetUrl("c:\path\file.m4a")
.SetUrl("c:/path/file.m4a")
.SetUrl(@ScriptDir&"\file.m4a")
.SetUrl(file://c:\path\file.m4a")
.SetUrl("file://c:/path/file.m4a")
.SetUrl("c:\\path\\file.m4a")
.SetUrl("c://path//file.m4a")
.SetUrl("file://c:\\path\\file.m4a")
.SetUrl("file://c://path//file.m4a")

...all to no avail! Does anyone know if/why it's not possible to load a local audio file using COM like Quicktime itself does? http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Q...hatsNew-74.html doesn't list anything that looks like an alternate method to .SetUrl() that would work locally, and http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/activexcontrol.html seems to use the same method whether loading local or web files, but maybe I'm missing something, since I REALLY don't understand COM too well (though I've learned a lot recently)

Third (last) question:

Can anyone see why a movie (.MP4) file can't be loaded (from a web server) the same way as an audio (.m4a) file? Quicktime loads them both fine itself, but COM doesn't seem to like it. And I HAVE checked the path for typos; the path should be the only thing that changes, but I start getting errors when I plug in a video file's path instead.

Thanks for your time and help!

P.S. I'll slip one more question in there: does anyone know of better documentation of the Quicktime COM controls (objects, whatever) than I've been able to find (linked to here)? Thanks!

[DaleHohm]

I have no experience Quicktime, but with COM...

1) use the version-independant string instead: Quicktime.Quicktime

this gets the latest version. When might this be a bad idea? Only if you are using a method or property introduced in say, .4, and the user only has .3. Typically not going to be a roblem for you.

2) I found a reference to this syntax working in a Google search: $QTobj.SetURL('C:\goodspeed_426.mov')

3) no idea

4) perhaps here (but it isn't very good): http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Q...inkElementID_15

Dale

[james3mg]

Dale:

THANKS for your reply! Sorry for the late rereply...I was out today.

That way of getting the latest version makes ... well ... a LOT of sense! Thanks for pointing that out to me - as I said, I'm still learning all this COM stuff.

I'll look for the page you found with Google-maybe they have a better-working implementation that I can use as a springboard...I just can't seem to get this rolling at all. .SetAutoplay(False) didn't even work for me like it should have - I had to use .SetRate() to 0 to pause it as soon as it's loaded! Maybe the QT people haven't got COM quite right...

Re: the link you gave me - I appreciate it, but that's pretty similar to everything I've been finding - the source of my problem: the only quicktime anyone seems to care about is the browser plugin, so everything's in Javascript! According to Apple, they're two totally different animals, but I can't find real com-specific documentation.

Oh well

Thanks for the effort! I'll keep trying, and hoping that maybe someone in the AI world has delved into quicktime and sees this

[Confuzzled]

Maybe the QT people haven't got COM quite right...

Isn't QuickTime the Apple programmers' revenge on Windows users?