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Windows Media Foundation Player for FileMaker

Until today you could only play video in FileMaker using an interactive container or loading the video in a web viewer. Now you get a new way using our brand new WMFP functions. The MBS Plugin loads a video, creates a video view and places it on top of the FileMaker layout. The video plays independent of FileMaker.

Background Audio

The new functions give you some interesting options. For example you can play audio without user interface in the background. Just by initializing the player without a reference to a window with WMFP.Create. FileMaker users can switch to other layouts, use dialogs and use FileMaker without disturbing the audio. You can control volume, balance and playback rate via script. If the playback reaches the end, we can trigger a script, so you can load another player to play the next song (see WMFP.SetPlaybackEndedScriptTrigger).

Video view on Layout

You can put a rectangle on the layout and tell the plugin to place the video there. The plugin puts the control on top of the FileMaker layout area. By using an existing control on the user interface, you control the position and size of the video area. In a script for resizing the layout you can adjust the video size using WMFP.SetFrame function.

If you use cards, registers or switch layouts, you may want to use WMFP.SetVisible to show/hide the video when needed.

Control functions

A video is loaded asynchronously. With WMFP.GetState you can query whether video is loaded, paused, playing or stopped. To change you can just call WMFP.Play to start playback and pause later if needed (WMFP.Pause).

You can change playback rate with WMFP.SetRate to play half speed or double speed. With balance control (WMFP.SetBalance) you can direct all sound to left or right speaker only. The WMFP.SetMute function can mute the sound.

If the video gets a letter box, you can set the background color with WMFP.SetBorder function.

Usage

When you use the functions, you need to have files on disk, so you need to export them from a container first. Then pass file URL for the file to the WMFP.Create function, if needed by converting path using Path.FilePathToFileURL function.

As video plays independent of what FileMaker does, you can of course just run a video while FileMaker runs a script to do some work. Instead of just waiting 30 seconds to sort records, you can show a video with a nice animation about sorting.

Coming soon with next prerelease.

PS: For Xojo developers, we have the same here: MFPMediaPlayerMBS
26 12 19 - 09:50