8.3. Scripting QuickTime Once you're tired of still graphics, music, and voice, you've got one multimedia medium left to cover: video. Apple's powerful video technology, QuickTime, comes preinstalled on Mac OS X, and you can access all its power with QuickTime Player (stored in your Applications folder). Double-click just about any movie on your hard drive, and QuickTime Player promptly launches.  | QuickTime Player can open more than just movies. For example, you can use QuickTime Player with music files, still pictures, and even plain text files. Still, QuickTime Player isn't the best program for handling those formatsthat's why you've got iTunes, iPhoto, and TextEdit, for example. |
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Even beyond the capabilities of QuickTime Player, you can use AppleScript to unlock additional multimedia features. For example, AppleScript lets you play videos full-screen (see below)a stunt that's normally reserved for the $30 QuickTime Pro. 8.3.1. Getting Started As a budding AppleScripter, you should take some time to meet QuickTime Playerin part, because there are more than 100 million copies of QuickTime in the world! QuickTime is available for both Macs and Windows PCseven though the AppleScript features work only with the Mac version. If you want to play with QuickTime Player, though, you first need a movie to use. Chances are you've got a few lying around on your hard drivejust do a search in the Finder for files that have an extension of .mov. Or, if you'd prefer, you can download a folder of QuickTime demo scripts from www.apple.com/applescript/quicktime/, and included with those scripts are a few demo movies. Once you've got a movie you like, double-click to open it in QuickTime Player, and then read on. 8.3.2. Presenting a Movie Full-Screen One of the neatest tricks QuickTime Player can perform is showing you a movie full-screen. Yes, the movie might appear a little grainy from being enlarged, but it still turns your computer into a mini-cinema. And after a while, it almost makes you feel guilty for not keeping a popcorn maker next to your computer. Once you've got a movie open, the only command you have to use is present. That's what turns an unsuspecting QuickTime movie file into a full-screen theater imitation (Figure 8-8). Here's how you use present: tell application "QuickTime Player" activate present the front movie --This is the important line end tell
As soon as you click Run, AppleScript brings QuickTime Player forward and presents the front-most movie in full-screen mode. Unfortunately, you lose access to the menu bar and Dock while the movie's playing. Therefore, Table 8-2 shows you how to use the keyboard to navigate a movie while it's in this mode. Table 8-2. Useful QuickTime keystrokes| Keystroke | What it does |
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| Space bar or Return key | Pauses the movie (press it a second time to resume) | | Right arrow/Left arrow | When paused, moves the movie one frame forward/back | |  -Right arrow/-Left arrow
| Plays the movie in forward/reverse | | Option-Right arrow/Option-Left arrow | Jumps to the end/beginning of the movie | | Up arrow/Down arrow | Increases/decreases the movie's volume | | Escape key | Exits full-screen mode and pauses the movie |
| If you'd like, you can play movies in other modes toolike half-size or double-size. Simply add the scale option to the end of your present command, like this: tell application "QuickTime Player" activate present the front movie scale half end tell
Mac OS X still darkens your screen with a black border; the difference is, your movie won't appear as grainy, since you're not stretching the image to fill your entire monitor. (You can replace half with normal, double, or current, too, to adjust the scale at which your movie plays.) |
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 | Figure 8-8. A movie, playing full-screen. If the movie is too wide or narrow for your screen, QuickTime automatically places black bars around the sides. |
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8.3.3. Including a Movie with Your Script If you're writing a script that involves playing a specific movie, it'll work great on your computer. The trouble is, the script won't work on other people's computers unless they, too, have the same movie stored in the same place on their hard drive. Luckily, AppleScript lets you include a movie with your script. Then, when you send your script to your aunt in Beijing, the movie file goes along for the ride, tooguaranteeing that the script can find and play the movie. Here's how to pull of this stunt: Find the movie you want to include with your script, and keep its folder open. For the purposes of this example, suppose the movie is called Poodles.mov and it's saved in your Movies folder (Home  Movies). New, or -N), and immediately save the script (File  Save, or -S). For the File Format, make sure you choose Application Bundlea special script format that lets you package files with your script (Sidebar 2.5). Keep all the Options turned off, name the script whatever you want, and save it anywhere you want. In the Finder, navigate to the script you just saved. Control-click the script's icon, and from the shortcut menu, choose Show Package Contents. A new window opens, letting you navigate into the guts of your script's application bundle. Inside the new window, open the Contents Resources folder. This is where you can store any files you want distributed with your script. Copy Poodles.mov into this new window. The movie is now stored inside your script. Back in Script Editor, write out the code that incorporates the movie into your script. Use the keywords path to me so your script can locate the file inside your application bundle. Here's one possibility for a script (it'll play Poodles.mov full-screen): set locOfMovie to (path to me as string) & "Contents:Resources:Poodles.mov" --locOfMovie is now the file path to your Poodles.mov file tell application "QuickTime Player" activate --Bring QuickTime forward open file locOfMovie --Open Poodles.mov present the front movie --Play the movie full-screen end tell
Save your script again. If you try to run your script from Script Editor, you'll get an error message, because AppleScript thinks path to me is referring to Script Editor itself, not your specific script. To get around this problem, simply close your Script Editor window and run your script by double-clicking its icon in the Finder.
8.3.4. Rotating a Movie In addition to simply showing movies at a different size, QuickTime can rotate a movieand it'll play just fine in its rotated state. It's the perfect solution if you accidentally videotaped your sister's wedding at a 90-degree angle. Here's a script that rotates whatever movie you drag to the script's icon by 90 degreesand then starts the footage rolling: --Part 1: on run display dialog "Drag a movie onto my icon to rotate and play it" end run --Part 2: on open selectedItem if (selectedItem count) > 1 then display dialog "Sorry, you dragged more than one movie onto my icon." --Part 3: else tell application "QuickTime Player" activate open selectedItem --Part 4: rotate the front movie by 90 play front movie end tell end if end open
| Just like the script on Section 7.3.3, this script is a droplet. That means you have to save it as an Application before the script will work properly. |
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Here's how the code works: Part 1 runs only if you double-click the script without dragging a movie to it. In that case, you'll see a dialog box with instructions for what to donamely, "drag a movie onto my icon to rotate or play it." Part 2 (and all the subsequent parts) runs if you do drag a movie to the script's icon. First, the script checks whether you dragged more than one movieif you did, it presents an error dialog box.
| This script chooses to work with only one movie because QuickTime Player can become jerky when playing several movies at once. If you want to do away with this one-movie limitation, though, just erase the if statement. And if you'd like to be able to watch multiple unrotated movies with this scriptsay, so you can see several views of your sister's wedding simultaneouslydelete both the if statement and the rotate the front movie by 90 line.. |
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Part 3 brings QuickTime Player forward, and opens a new window for the movie you dropped on top of the script's icon. Part 4, finally, rotates your movie clockwise by 90 degrees and starts playing it (Figure 8-9).
 | Figure 8-9. Apple's famous 1984 commercial (http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/), playing in two different modes. Top: Normally, if you simply double-clicked the movie's icon in the Finder, this is what you'd see. Bottom: However, if you run this script, you'll see your movie play sideways, like this. (For even more fun, use AppleScript to rotate your movies by irregular numbers of degrees96.7, for example.) |
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| To rotate your movie counterclockwise, you can use a negative number with the rotate command (for instance, rotate the front movie by -45). Alternatively, you can simply use a positive number greater than 180 (rotate front movie by 315, for example, would accomplish the same thing). |
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Beyond these features, QuickTime Player has many other capabilities, too. Download Apple's well-commented sample scripts from www.apple.com/applescript/quicktime/ for more scripting inspiration, and don't forget to check out QuickTime Player's dictionary (File Open Dictionary, Shift--O) for a list of additional AppleScript commands Power Users' Clinic
DVD Player | If you're one of the lucky Mac owners with a DVD drive, you've got a whole set of extra AppleScript commands at your service. The DVD Player program (in your Applications folder) has a dictionary that includes such useful commands as step DVD (for skipping ahead one movie frame at a time) and go (for quickly jumping to the DVD's main menu or title screen). The truth is, though, Apple's done most of the hard work for you. DVD Player includes its own Script menu (Sidebar 1.1), where you can access a bunch of useful, built-in scripts to control all facets of your DVD watching. Here's what they do: 
Go to Time lets you pick a specific time in the movie to jump to. If you remember that an action sequence starts exactly 23 minutes and 42 seconds into a movie, for instance, this command can get you there in a snap. Preferred Playback is a shortcut for using Apple's optimum DVD Player settings. That involves a full-screen DVD window and a horizontal Controller window, among other minor preferences. Random Info Color, an utterly useless script, uses randomly colored text for the Info window, which shows the title and chapter of the movie you're watching. Show Wide Info and Show Standard Info let you switch between the two display modes of the Info window: either square with big text (Standard) or rectangular with small text (Wide). Reset Windows sets your DVD Player windows to their factory-fresh size and position.
Finally, the Applets submenu has three extra scripts: Changing Info Color continuously changes the text color in the Info window. It's totally useless but kinda fun to watch. Loop Movie plays your movieand then plays it over and over again from the beginning when it finishes playing. You could use this if you'd made a corporate DVD for a trade show, for example, but didn't want to hover over your computer and keep restarting the DVD by hand Preview Movie plays the first few seconds of each scene, much like the script in Section 8.2.2.1 does for iTunes music. If you need to prepare a next-day movie review for a newspaper article, this trick lets you watch a DVD in only a fraction of the time that it takes to watch the entire thing.
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