Knowledge Base

Auto-Start .AVI on Viewer Start Up

Article ID: 110478

Article Last Modified on 10/14/2003

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit 2.0
Microsoft Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit 2.0a

This article was previously published under Q110478

SUMMARY

This article contains information on how to make Viewer play an .AVI file when your user first starts up your Viewer title. The step-by-step instructions in Method 1 will help you put an auto-starting video into your title using the Multimedia ewX command. The instructions in Method 2 will give you more control over the video by using mciSendString() commands. Method 2 also tells you how to execute a command, such as JumpID(), immediately after the .AVI file finishes playing.

MORE INFORMATION

First, decide how you want your startup screen to look. Do you want the Viewer window to be a certain size and position on your users screen (see Optional Window Design later in this article)? Do you want just an .AVI file or do you want text and bitmaps too?

If you want your user to have control of pausing, playing, or stopping the .AVI file choose Method 1. If you want your user to have less control over when the .AVI starts or stops choose Method 2.

Decide how you want your user to get out of the startup screen and on to other topics in your title. Method 2 explains the following:

How to enable the user to use the Search, Index, and Contents buttons from the startup screen.
How to remove all of the default buttons (temporarily) and make your own button(s).
How to use a text or bitmap hotspot on the screen to jump to another topic when the user clicks it.
How to make Viewer automatically jump to a specific topic as soon as the .AVI file finishes playing.

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

110384 Direct Control of .AVI Files From Viewer

Method 1

How to Play an Auto-start .AVI file on Viewer Startup

In your .RTF file, create your startup screen topic. Add your context string footnote and any topic entry commands that you want from the "Optional Window Design" section of this article. Insert a Multimedia ewX command where you want your .AVI file to appear. See page 10-9 of the Authoring Guide for step-by-step instructions on inserting an embedded MCI sequence into a topic.
On page 10-9 of the Authoring Guide, step 6 says to "Type the properties you want for the multimedia controller." You should select Auto-Start.
In Project Editor, select [OPTIONS] from the Section menu. In the Contents Topic field, type in the context string of your .AVI topic. The first topic you see when you start Viewer is the topic specified in the Contents Topic in the [OPTIONS] Title Options section of the Project File. If no topic is specified in the Contents Topic field, then the default action of Viewer is to display the first page of the first .RTF file listed in the Project File.
You should have already decided how you want your user to get from the .AVI topic to the table of contents. If you want to manipulate the buttons or menus, see pages 5-16 to 5-18 of the Viewer Technical Reference. If you want to use the Contents button, see step 5 in these instructions. If you want to make a bitmap hotspot that runs JumpID(), see pages 9-8 to 9-16 of the Viewer Authoring Guide. For other ideas on how to get from the startup screen to other topics in the title, see chapter 6, Linking Topics, in the Viewer Authoring Guide.
The default Contents button will jump to the topic specified in the [OPTIONS] section. To change the Contents button so that it jumps to your "real" table of contents, use the ChangeButtonBinding() function. Place the ChangeButtonBinding() function in the [CONFIG] section of your Project file. The ChangeButtonBinding() function needs to be after the Std20Buttons() function in the [CONFIG] section. Here is an example of a ChangeButtonBinding() function:
```
   ChangeButtonBinding(`btn_contents', `JumpID(`autoavi.mvb',
   `table_of_contents')')
                        
```
NOTE: The Contents() command will jump to the topic specified in the CONTENTS option in the [OPTIONS] section or it will jump to the default contents topic. In this case, the Contents() command will jump to the .AVI topic.

Method 2

How to Automatically Execute JumpID When the .AVI File Finishes Playing

In this method, you will NOT use a Multimedia ewX command. Instead, you will manually insert three commands to open, play, and close your .AVI file. You can then insert commands that will execute only after your .AVI file is closed. In this example, a JumpID() is executed to jump to the table of contents. For this example, all of these commands are placed in a topic entry command.

NOTE: Page 5-1 of the Authoring Guide states that "In a Viewer title, commands can be run at any of the following times:

When Viewer first loads a title
When a topic group is entered or exited
When a topic is displayed
When a hot spot is selected"

In your .RTF file, create your startup screen topic. Add your context string footnote and any topic entry commands that you want from the "Optional Window Design" section of this article. Next, insert a topic entry command at the beginning of the topic. The order of the footnotes does not matter; the topic entry command can be before or after any of the other footnotes. Type the following four commands in the "Topic Entry commands: (one per line)" section of the Topic Editor dialog box:
```
   mciSendString("open coyote.avi",0,0,0)
   mciSendString("play coyote.avi wait",0,0,0)
   mciSendString("close coyote.avi",0,0,0)
   JumpID(`title.mvb>main', `table_of_contents')
                        
```
Where table_of_contents is the context string for the true contents topic, title.mvb is the title of your project, and replace coyote.avi with the name of the .AVI file you want to play. Whatever .AVI file you use, the .AVI file will need to be either in the same directory as the .MVP file, or in a directory specified by the ROOT option (see page 2-10 of the Viewer Authoring Guide).

NOTE: You can also enter this topic entry command without using the Topic Editor. Choose Footnote from the Insert menu of Microsoft Word for Windows. In the View Footnotes window, the footnote text should look as follows:
```
      ! mciSendString("open coyote.avi",0,0,0); mciSendString("play
      coyote.avi wait",0,0,0); mciSendString("close coyote.avi",0,0,0);
      JumpID(`title.mvb>main', `table_of_contents')
                        
```
Add the following line to your [CONFIG] section so that Viewer knows where to find the mciSendString procedure:

RegisterRoutine("mmsystem","mciSendString","SUuu")

MMSYSTEM.DLL will need to be on any machine that your title will play on. The file MMSYSTEM.DLL comes with Windows 3.1, and can be found in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. You do not need to ship this DLL with your product.
In Project Editor, select [OPTIONS] from the Section menu. In the Contents Topic field, type in the context string of your .AVI topic. The first topic you see when you start Viewer is the topic specified in the Contents Topic in the [OPTIONS] Title Options section of the Project File. If no topic is specified in the Contents Topic field, then the default action of Viewer is to display the first page of the first .RTF file listed in the Project File.
The default Contents button will jump to the topic specified in the [OPTIONS] section. To change the Contents button so that it jumps to your "real" table of contents, use the ChangeButtonBinding() function. Place the ChangeButtonBinding() function in the [CONFIG] section of your Project file. The ChangeButtonBinding() function needs to be after the Std20Buttons() function in the [CONFIG] section. The following is an example of a ChangeButtonBinding() function:
```
   ChangeButtonBinding(`btn_contents', `JumpID(`autoavi.mvb',
   `table_of_contents')').
                        
```
NOTE: The Contents() command will jump to the topic specified in the CONTENTS option in the [OPTIONS] section or it will jump to the default contents topic. In this case, the Contents() command will jump to the .AVI topic.

Optional Window Design

To temporarily change the look of your Viewer title, execute some of the following commands as topic entry commands:

Use PositionWindow() to set the size and position of a window.
Use PositionMaster() to set the size and position of the master pane.
Use HideMenuBar() and ShowMenuBar().
Use HideButtonBar() and ShowButtonBar().
Use CreateButton() and DestroyButton().

For more information on hiding the caption bar, hiding maximize button, hiding the minimize button, and/or hiding the system menu button, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

111011 Changing the Style of the Main Window

Additional query words: 2.00 2.00a

Keywords: KB110478