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HC Tips and Tricks
Picture displays GIF files (et al) via QuickTime Graphics Importers. Using a bit depth of 0 causes Picture to require a QuickTime call that isn't supported with QuickTime 2.5, and you will get an error in that one case.
Kevin Calhoun
Apple Computer, Inc.
The Movie XCMD's "startTime" and "endTime" properties define the active segment of the movie - that is, the times at which playback starts and stops. When a movie is opened it's startTime is 0 and it's endTime is the movie's duration. Set the startTime to a specific movie time and the endTime to a specific movie time, and when you play the movie it will start and stop at the times you want, displaying the last frame when it stops.
Eric Carlson
Apple Computer
If you are dealing with various size Qt pictures or movies as in a slide show of cards that offers option of Full screen or thumbnail, compute window and movie rects and store info on card. Then read that info next time you come to the card.
Tom Witte
Thought I'd pass along a tip concerning the display of QuickTime movies,since it has saved me a lot of hassle recently. In the past our multi-stack CD ROMs have used QT extensively, for animation and normal movies. What we used to do was create new movie windows for each new animation etc, display it, close it. This created a lot of headaches keeping track of windows and whether they were open or closed, and making sure that windows closed or were hidden if users went to the next screen halfway through etc. Sometimes there would be many open (but not visible) windows hanging around gobbling up memory. In addition, opening and closing windows takes time. The far simpler solution is to just create one movie window when your stack starts up and keep it open until the users quits your program. Then you just change the movie that goes in the window and the position and size of the movie as appropriate. This can be handled in a few lines of code.
Russell Willis
You can avoid the white pop which happens opening or closing a QT movie by setting the DontErase to true. Set it once at the beginning of the handler, and there is no white pop closing or opening the movie.
Catherine Kunicki
c@
Card art can contain both white and transparent pixels which appear the same unless they are positioned over black background objects or paint. An abundance of unnecessary white pixels can increase stack size significantly when there is a lot of card art. Change all white pixels to transparent where possible (select the card art and choose the "transparent" menu item). If there are a significant number of white pixels, the stack size should decrease.
Brett Sher