BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

  Humanities Technology and Research Support Center

CHum 310
Using QuickTime Movies in Revolution

This project will help you learn how to incorporate and control QuickTime movies into your Revolution stack. For this project you will use the short QuickTime movie you made previously.

1. Go to the Templates folder on the CHum 310 file server and copy the stackfile called "QTProjTemplate.rev".
2. Make your copy of the template stack is unlocked (i.e., not read only). You can do this by doing File > Save As... after downloading the stack, or by downloading over the internet with go stack URL "chum310.byu.edu/templates/QTProjTemplate.rev" in the message box and saving the stack locally with File > Save.
3. Relabel the stack with your name in the space indicated.
4. Create a plain text file containing the spoken dialog from your movie file. Each line of dialog should be end with a return (carriage return) character, so that Revolution sees it as a single line. Name the file something like "myDialog.txt"
5. When you open this card you should automatically load contents of the file "myDialog.txt" into the field provided. Again, be sure that the dialog is separated into lines, rather than being in one continuous paragraph.
6. You will need to script your stack to provide the following functionality. You do not have to use the exact buttons provided. You may combine or divide functionality using whatever buttons you wish:
• When you open the card, your movie should be automatically be linked to the player object "myMovie" (or whatever you want to name it.) Make sure that this link is not broken if you move your project folder to another locationor system. (Hint: You may want to use the defaultFolder property to handlethis. Or you could leave the file on our class server and refer to it using an http:// URL.)
• The movie's controller should not be visible.
• When you click the play button, the movie should begin playing from its current frame.
• When you click the rewind button, the movie should be reset to the beginning and be paused.
• When you click on a line of dialog in the dialog field, the video segment corresponding to that line should play. (See hint* below for a idea on how you could do this.)
• The "playall" button, when clicked, should begin playing the movie from the beginning of the dialog and stop playing at the end of the dialog.
• Create automatic commentaries that automatically appear in the commentary field as the movieis playing. For example, you may want to display a comment like "John is about to walk through the door." at an appropriate time during the playback. Remember to delete the commentary whenit is no longer relevant. You should provide at least three (3) separate commentaries. Use callback messages to do the commentary.
7. Finishing touches: Remember that a clear and visually appealing interface is important for making your stack user friendly. Consider ways to improve the current design. For example, you could provide appropriate icons for the movie controller buttons. (See the Media > btnIcons folder on the CHum310 server for some ideas.) Are other video controls needed? (How do you stop playing?) Consider also such things as screen layout and size and appearance of text, buttons, etc. Proofread your materials carefully.
8. The stack "QTProjKey.rev" shows a working example. Please don't simply copy the scripts from that stack, but do refer to it if you get stuck.

   *Hint: You could create a custom property for the field "dialog". Call it something like "dialogIndex". On each line of this custom property you could put the startTime and endTime, separated by commas, for the segment of video in which that line of dialog is spoken.