I’m new to applescripting, so sorry if this is off topic or just not possible in Applescript. What I want to do is to have an applescript on one computer control a quicktime movie on another computer. Computers would be connected via ethernet. Ideally, multiple computers playing movies is what I am trying to achieve, and movies somehow kept in sync.
I’m not certain if two or more movies played together will finish frame accurately at the same time. Is there a way of keeping them sync’d?
Regards
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Well, you can have applescript ‘tell’ an application to run on another machine if it’s sharing setup allows remote events, but if they need to be syncronized, you may want to consider plugging two screens into a single mac.
Two screens on one Mac is Ok if playing out two small quicktime movies. What I require is a solution so that each mac is playing an HD resolution movie, possibly encoded with the H264 codec. This is quite processor intensive and even the latest dual Macs can not decode suffiently fast enough for two streams.
microsft have now released a system (Live Palyback System) whereby one PC controls other PCs on the network each running a Windows Media player movie file. I just wanted to do similar but with Macs.
Remote apple events are a possibility, as is remote desktop, but you’re probably going to have a big headache trying to achieve perfect sync. If I were in your situation I would configure each mac to play its movie at a specific time using the UNIX crontab. http://www.abstracture.de/projects-en/cronnix
We are just starting to research this as well. The idea is known as QuickTime Synchronization, and apparently there are several companies out there that are trying to market their solutions that do this. From what I’ve heard, it’s not that hard to get QuickTime to behave this way - and it really does work as a professional grade workflow tool. MUCH better than any streaming solution right now.
So - please let me know if you solve it yourself. We will be researching…
I’m also working on this same problem. With a difference that I don’t need HD-video, but 4 screens, and propably then 4-5 macs… Virtual VTR seems to be good solution, but unfortunately too expensive. Other that I have been thinking is Dataton Wachout, but thats even more expensive, and won’t work in mac…
So if any other solutions arise, I would be also highly interested…
No sure if you have solved this yet, but I was searching for the same thing. I came up with this as a start - hope it helps!
tell application "QuickTime Player"
launch
activate
repeat
-- set to the movie of your choice
tell movie 1
-- make the variable current_time follow the current time
set current_time to current time
-- remote machine
tell application "QuickTime Player" of machine "eppc://user:pass@remotemachine.local"
activate
-- this assumes the same movie is open on the remote machine
tell movie 1
set current time to current_time
end tell
end tell
-- end remote machine
end tell
end repeat
end tell
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