Via an InLine, you can enumerate through every frame in the movie and analyze values of when it was rendered, scheduled, displayed.  Please see the KB for more information.

-Brandon

In general, use PreRelease in the object prior to your movie.  If playing movies adjacent to each other or in general loading at begin of the procedure, then check out the sample on how to load images http://support.pstnet.com/forum/FindPost663.aspx.  If you want a report of each movie frame, reply back.

-Brandon

I am trying to send a trigger at the point of a cut during a movie file. I initially tried to do this by using to movie files played back to back (with the cut occuring in between and giving and providing an easy means of inserting some inline to send a trigger via the parallel port). However, even without the trigger, this lead to a large delay between files. Preloading of the movie files did not resolve the problem and caching lead to the display of a series of a white screens (caching was achieved through minor changes to timingparadigm5 (replacement of the image display with a moviedisplay)).

I also felt that gaining info on how to access frame specific information may provide a means of better understanding how frames were dealt with and, potentially, a means of tieing a trigger to the frame occuring at the cut (by using a single movie file that includes the cut rather than two separate files either side of the cut.)

What this sets up is the ability to have the InLine absorb/handle the duration of the object where it can monitor items.  This is similar in scope to how the Process Reponse Template sample works.

Once in the loop you can setup script to search for a specific frame displayed.  Each MovieDisplay or SlideMovie offers a Frames collection.  This returns a collection (array) of MovieDisplayFrame objects.  A MovieDisplayFrame offers properties like TimeScheduled, TimeDisplayed, and a Status property which can determine if the frame is new, rendered, scheduled, displayed, dropped, or stopped.  Note that the movie objects are buffering ahead, so the .Count property will always be greater than the number of frames actually displayed (at least until they all are).

So the script below ensures that frame 100 is in the collection and then if it is displayed or dropped, it fires a WritePort for the trigger.  Your paradigm can use a similar approach.

Const TARGET_FRAME = 100

Dim theMovie As MovieDisplay
Set theMovie = CMovieDisplay(Rte.GetObject("Stimulus"))
Debug.Assert Not theMovie Is Nothing

Do While theMovie.InputMasks.IsPending()
  
 'Did the movie process enough frames yet?
 If theMovie.Frames.Count >= TARGET_FRAME Then

  'Early RC builds did not have these constants
  ' if you get a compiler error here then
  ' comment out these lines
  Const ebStatusDisplayed = 3
  Const ebStatusDropped = 4

  'Get the frame
  Dim theMovieDisplayFrame As MovieDisplayFrame
  Set theMovieDisplayFrame = theMovie.Frames(TARGET_FRAME)
  If Not theMovieDisplayFrame Is Nothing Then

   'Has it been displayed or dropped
   ' if not it is new, rendered, scheduled, or stopped
   If theMovieDisplayFrame.Status = ebStatusDisplayed Or _
    theMovieDisplayFrame.Status = ebStatusDisplayed Then

    WritePort &H378, 1

    Exit Do

   End If

  End If

 End If

 'Give time back
 Sleep 10
 DoEvents

Loop