(figured this might be a better place for this discussion from earlier to be moved to, since it's not about scripting... yet!)

Just wondering how are you going with allowing videos to be played? No rush, but it's the one "big" function IMO that's missing.

I expect the need for various formats makes it harder than adding other multimedia functions (hence my "short list" of preferred formats earlier, though .avi (xvid/divx), .wmv and .mp4 would be the only real "must-haves" I'd think) and I do remember it took Kenneth a while to perfect in Cybermistress.

Just thought I'd ask, though.

Since Groovy runs on the Java Virtual Machine, you can play videos and other media files in your script using java packages designed for that task. You can have a look to Java Media Framework for this prupose if you like:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/index-jsp-140239.html

This way it is possible to play videos on your script by now. But I think this is not an enough fairly solution, if your script is using JMF it'd be a requisite for another user who downloads it to have the Java API. And on the other hand, not all sexscripts users will be good programmers used to Java packages, so the video-playback feature is still needed.

Thanks for the heads up. It's good to know it's possible already, even if its a bit of a 'workaround', and one that non-programmers would struggle with. It just shows how flexible SexScripts is that it can still do something it isn't yet designed to do with a bit of extra work.

I definitely agree that a proper video playback function is needed, though.

I made some trials that failed (JMF is dead, VLC is not finished, unsure of omnividea).
For now, this trick is only available for windows only :


I'm no a fan of video :
- hosted online : script becomes false after some time (when video disappear)
- included in script : too big

I'm happy 'using' Windows... but I know a couple of CyberMistress users who were non-Windows (Linux, I think) users who didn't like it for that very reason.

I agree with you really about video in scripts/routines, actually... I've used short clips but generally I find sound+pictures works better since there's more room for imagination and the script size is kept small.

I do still stand by my statement that I think proper video playback is the last 'big feature' SexScripts is 'missing', to call itself complete, though, even though I've yet to see video used well and widely in this sort of medium.

For now, it works with any external program (Windows, Linux Gnome (?), Mac), see the new function useFile().

Just wondering if this ever got fixed/added? I'm presuming not, because I can't find any information and I do recall it being rather difficult to implement. Still, it'd be a shame if SS never had proper video/multimedia capacity.

Working with SS again today after all this time, it seems to me like this is the last remaining big/important feature still missing.

For me, the main "issue" with using an external player is that the script can't be made to wait for the video to play/finish playing... meaning with something fairly unreliable like WMP, you can have SS tell it to open a video, but the user doesn't even know it's trying to until it suddenly pops up (perhaps in the background) several minutes later than it should, due to loading in the background!

I understand. I'm not sure about it.

Would it better if the function would not return until the video application has stop ? I'm not sure it can be done, but I can search about it.

I'm trying h264j also, but, if it works, it'll be h264+mp3 only. Perhaps jCodec also.

As a stopgap measure, I think having the choice to make scripts not continue until the video finishes is GREAT... though in theory, I suppose if the media player hangs/crashes (as WMP or QT often does!) it might mess things up. Still, a choice of 'playBackgroundVideo' (as it now works) or 'playVideo' (script pauses until the video finishes) would be a good solution for now without the troublesome workload of adding proper video support to SS, IMO.

As for future support, as much as I don't like limited video type support, I think for SS it would be a case of "any support is better than no support". Ideally, I'd want .mp4, .wmv and .avi (in that order) as the supported files, but that is likely a massive headache, I know. As much as I hate Apple, they seem to survive just fine with .mp4 only on their devices!

Also, having just one format supported would mean script creators having to convert videos to that format first, but given how few actually use video, I think that's okay. It would also possibly encourage using only short clips and keeping file sizes low.

Again, for me it's about having options.