TechNote (Archived)

Error occurs on Windows when projector has a long (125 characters) file path

Issue

An error occurs when creating or running a projector on Windows. The error refers to an 'INI' file and may indicate that your disk is full. The issue can produce the following errors:

Running a Projector: 3 errors occur
Director player Error: Unable to load movie playlist. Does the .INI file exist? It must contain a section ["Movies"] with an entry 'Movie01=pathname.dir'.
Director player Error: The Projector is Stopping
Application Error The Application cannot run

Creating a Projector
Director MX: Unable to create or save file C:\(your file path)\(your projector).exe Your disk may be full.

Note: This error also occurs when importing a QuickTime movie with a long file path. The QuickTime video will appear blank.

Reason

This issue occurs when the file path of a projector exceeds 125 characters. The file path includes the drive letter or name, all folders below that drive, and the file name. For example, if the file was located in the root directory of drive C, the path would be 'C://filename.exe'. The preceding path contains 16 characters.

To find the number of characters in a Director movie, type the following code in the message window:

put (the moviepath&the moviename).length

When the code above is executed in the message window, the number that appears contains all the characters in the file path.

Note: The number of characters in the path to the Director movie (DIR file) is not significant when packaging a projector. The number of characters in a projector path (EXE file) are significant and can cause the INI error when packaging.

Solution

The problem has been fixed in Director MX 2004.

Users of Director 8, 8.5 and MX:
Do not create or run projectors that reside in a location that will cause the projector path to contain an excess of 125 characters. When distributing a projector, be sure to note to end users that putting the projector in deep subdirectories may cause problems. When importing a QuickTime video, be sure that the path to the video file does not exceed 125 characters. (Ref. 158068)