Forcing WMP to exit once playback over

[NickHoughton]

Hi All

Wondering if you can help. Doing a piece of BSc coursework. Have to produce an Expert SYstem in Powerpoint (Don't know why)

I have an AVI file I want to call in WMP in full screen and then close once playback is over. The videos are captured at 800*600 from VMWare so embedding them in the PPT file is not really feasible as the target machines are quite old.

I have managed a work around in a batch, file to get suppress the yes/no prompt for opening a batch file I have had to lower the security settings which I may not be able to do on the target system.

I think I need a less sloppy way to do this. I was wondering if a macro would help but I thought a similar thing may occur with the security warning. ALso, I have never worked with VBscript.

Here is my batch file:

@echo off
REM open WMP folder
c:

cd\progra~1

cd "windows media player"

REM call wmplayer and load specific file
start wmplayer "i:\filename.avi" /fullscreen

REM make the system wait until the video has finished
REM -n X where X is number of seconds of film
ping -n 15 localhost

REM kill wmp
taskkill /f /im wmplayer.exe
~~~~~~~~
end
~~~~~~~~


any suggestions?
Any

[kmount]

"C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe /play /fullscreen /close" I:\Filename.avi

Using /play and /close together means it plays and then closes.
/fullscreen as you know runs it in full screen.

The above should work but I'm not on a windows box to test it out on. - It may need the arguments taking outside of the quotes but I'm not certain.

Hope this helps.

[NickHoughton]

works a treat

Many thanks
I had googled the wmplayer CLI arguments but didn't see that

not sure how to get around the security settings, though...

[kmount]

What security settings?

[NickHoughton]

In powerpoint 2003, tools > options > security > macro security

there are 4 settings. If you don't choose the "low" option powerpoint prompts with a potentially unsafe file type message and provides a yes no box

[kmount]

Do 'all' filetypes have this warning I wonder ...

I mean, is it throwing its toys out of the pram by opening the mediaplayer executable, or the batchfile itself?

If its the batchfile, we could try using AutoIT to come up with an EXE that effectively embeds the batch file in it.

[NickHoughton]

appears to be any .exe, .bat. .com files