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Play The Web 2008SE

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Play The Web 2008SE

Use a video as a web kiosk

We will now see how easy it is to use video files on a web kiosk using Play The Web. In fact, a video file can be displayed as any other file if a player software can be managed using a command line.

Install a video player

To display video files, use a video player like the Zoom Player, included in the Combined Community Codec Pack that you can download and use for free from the web.

This player can read a lot of video file formats, including AVI, MPEG or WMV.

A command line option is available to run this player full screen. Also, there is an option allowing to close the player when the video ends. For all these reasons, Zoom Player is a very convenient software to display video files on a web kiosk.

Download and install Zoom Player, using the default path for this application.

Open the "Options" dialog, switch to the Playback settings.
In the "On Play Complete" option, select the "Close Player" value:

Click the "Apply" button and close the Options dialog.
Quit Zoom Player.

Use a video file in Play The Web

Then, update your Play The Web settings: in the Configuration dialog box, switch to the Pages tab.
Open the Properties dialog box and point to a video file that is stored on a web server or on a file server.
For instance:

http://www.vaugouin.com/mouse01.avi

Check the "Create a local copy of this page or file" option.
The path and file name of the copy are then displayed in the dialog box.
Make sure the "Run as a separate process" option is checked.
With this option checked, Play The Web will launch a command line starting Zoom Player full screen with the given video file as a parameter:

"C:\Program Files\Combined Community Codec Pack\Zoom Player\zplayer.exe" "%1" /F

Check the "Display until separate process ends" check box, so Play The Web will switch to the next file or page in the page loop as soon as the video player finished.

Set also a maximal display time for the video. If the video does not end by itself, it will be killed by Play The Web after the delay typed here.

You can also set a delay when the video finishes before starting the next video. Use the "Delay after separate process ends" entry box for that purpose. In the mean time, the transition HTML page is displayed. With the registered version of Play The Web, you can change the look of this transition page and use your home page.

Click OK to close the Properties dialog box, and OK again to close the Configuration dialog box.

When Play The Web will be launched, the video file will be downloaded and cached locally so it can be displayed with the video player.

Update the video file through the network

When the video file is updated on the server, the software automatically retrieves the newer version and always displays the latest available file.

This feature is useful for an automatic update of several computers running Play The Web from with content files stored in a central repository.

Try it!

Enter the address of a video file (.avi, for instance) located on the web or on a file server:

Display video files from a given directory

You can use Play The Web to display all video files from a given directory:
in the Configuration dialog box, select the Pages tab.
Click on the "Insert" button to open the "Properties" dialog box.
In the "Properties" dialog box, type the path of the directory containing video files followed by a "*.avi" file mask.
For instance:

c:\videos\*.avi

Make sure the "Run as a separate process" option is checked.

Also, check the "Display until separate process ends" option to ensure Play The Web switches to the next file as soon as a given video file ends.

If you want to display files stored in sub-directories, check the "Include sub-directories" check box.

Display movie files downloaded from a web folder

Play The Web is able to download movie files from a web site and display these files using a separate application like Zoom Player or another video player.

For instance, if you have an undefined count of .avi files located on a web server, like the following folder:

http://www.vaugouin.com/avi/

You can include the following properties in the page loop of Play The Web:

With these settings, Play The Web will automatically retrieve the list of files stored in the given folder of the web server.

Each file will be downloaded and displayed using the default application based on file extension.

Because the web folder contains links to .avi files but also links to sort the file list on different fields, it is necessary to exclude these links through the "Exclude" tab:

Also, because the content of the web folder may change and some files can appear or disappear, you need to set a minimum size for a file to be downloaded through the Update tab:

For instance, set a minimum size of 10000 characters minimum to avoid handling of a not found (error 404) error page as a valid .avi file. The value set here should be greater than the actual size of an error page.

Click here to run this sample.