Hey Chris,
maybe "rate 0" "rate 0.5" "rate 1"
I think that is more clear and "rate" transparently turns on and off the internal timer. If you want "auto 0" or manual, then either don't sent rate messages, or to turn off the internal timer send "rate 0" which does make sense for "pause".
Indeed the feature is really handy, especially for this installation, which plays 16 videos simultaneously. Does a great job of it too! Thanks for all the efforts.
Say any info on the installation you've been talking about using pix_record?
b..b.
chris clepper wrote:
On 2/6/06, B. Bogart ben@ekran.org wrote:
Ah, ok, so to "play/pause" using "rate" I had to:
send "auto 1" first, then "rate 0" would pause, "rate 1" unpause, with "auto 0" "rate 0/1" does nothing. :(
auto 0/1 is a state - pix_film either uses that method of playback or it doesn't. You can actually get that state in a patch very easily and have visual feedback using a simple toggle. 'play' and 'pause' require a few objects to keep track of the state and by themselves give no indication of what's going on.
The rate message tells Quicktime how fast to play back the movie. It does a hell of a lot better job than feeding frame numbers to the right inlet, which is why it's there.
I think this stuff needs a rethink, maybe stuff like play, pause, stop, not sure about "auto" since "internal_timer 1/0" is a little long!!!
As it stands I think the interface could be clearer for the user (to guess functionality if for nothing else) "pause 1/0" alas!
Perhaps auto and rate could be the same message: auto 0 does not play back while auto 1 plays at 1x rate and auto 0.5 plays at half speed. The rate message could do the same, take your pick.
There's a lot of hacking to get the Quicktime playing somewhat in sync with the GEM render chain, but the performance difference with multiple files playing is well worth it.
cgc