TechNote

Playing DVDs from a specific path or folder

DVD cast members have a folder property that can be used to set the pathname of the folder from which a DVD (VIDEO_TS) is playing. Setting the folder property will allow Director to play DVDs from the hard drive or from a relative location of the movie/projector. The DVD folder should always be namedvideo_ts and should contain properly authored VOB files. This property can be set through the Property inspector and through scripting.

By default, Director MX 2004 will look for a "VIDEO_TS" folder first on the root (example: C:\video_ts ), and then on the DVD drive. Many developers of kiosk projects place all DVD content on the root drive, to avoid any DVD path finding issues.

Setting the folder property using the Property inspector (List View mode)

To set or edit the folder property in the Property inspector, click the DVD tab of the Property inspector and switch the panel to List View mode. The text box will only recognize a string value for this property, not variables. Therefore, only absolute paths will work when using the Property inspector to set the folder property.

Setting the folder property using Lingo or JavaScript syntax

Developers can also set the folder property with scripting. By scripting to set this property, developers can use absolute paths;as with the Property inspector;but can also use custom and system variables, such as _movie.path (the moviePath). Below are some sample codes on how to use this property:

 -- Lingo syntax member(2).folder = "C:\DVD\video_ts" member(2).folder = the moviePath & video_ts" // JavaScript syntax member(2).folder = "C:\DVD\video_ts"; member(2).folder = _movie.path + "video_ts";

Issues with Macintosh DVD folder pathnames

On Macintosh machines, the format of the pathname for the folder property should use a forward slash ( / ) as the paths delimiter, instead of the standard Macintosh delimiter colon ( : ). In addition, /volumes/ should be concatenated at the start of the pathname of the DVD folder. If the DVD folder is located on the root of the boot drive, it might look like:

member(2).folder = /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Test_DVD/video_ts

When the _movie.path command is used for retrieving the path of the projector or movie on a Macintosh, it will contain a colon ( : ) instead of the forward slash ( / ). The use of the colon in the DVD folder's pathName will cause an error. As a workaround, developers can use a script to replace the colon characters to forward slashes. Below is a sample handler that returns the value with the ":" characters replaced with "/".

Note: The Macromedia Engineering and QA teams are aware of this issue and have logged this as a bug. Please check this TechNote for future updates (Ref. 164357).

----------------------------------------------- handler -----------------------------------------------------

 on changeDelimiter temp = the moviePath repeat with i= 1 to temp.char.count if temp.char[i] = ":" then tempChar = "/" newPath = newPath & tempChar else newPath = newPath & temp.char[i] end if end repeat put newPath end changeDelimiter

----------------------------------------------- handler -----------------------------------------------------

Calling the handler above will return the path of the movie or projector with the correct format containing forward slashes. If the DVD folder is located in the same location as the movie/projector, the string /volumes/ can be concatenated at the start or the path, and the stringvideo_ts at the end of the path, in order to get the full path of the DVD folder. The resulting path can then be assigned to the folder property of the DVD cast member, as shown in the code below:

member(2).folder = /volumes/ & changeDelimiter() & video_ts