Creating a Movie Annotation Plug-in

[miniCooper@adobeforums.com]

Hi,

I'm trying to create a plug-in that creates a pdf and embeds a movie annotation into the pdf.

The only problem i'm having is locating the correct path to the file.
File Location-> C:/tmp/Surgery.avi

I've tried passing in the file specification as a string via
1) "C:/tmp/Surgery.avi"
2) "C:\\/tmp\\/Surgery.avi"

But none of them seem to be locating the correct movie file. I read about protecting the file path using back slashes in the PDF Reference documentation.

My plug-in creates the pdf and begins to set up the cos object properly but cannot find the correct path ... When I run my plug-in in Acrobat 3D, a window appears saying "C:/tmp/Surgery.avi cannot be found. Would you like to choose a replacement file?"

If someone could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Kristy

Below is my source code to setup my Cos Object
----------------------------------------------
// Create Dictionary and set its Key as "Movie" in the annot dictionary
CosObj dictMovie = CosNewDict ( cosDoc, true, DICTIONARY_SIZE );
CosDictPutKeyString ( cosAnnot, "Movie", dictMovie );

// -----------------------------
// Entries in a movie dictionary
// -----------------------------

// Key = subtype, value = Movie
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "Subtype", CosNewName(cosDoc, false, ASAtomFromString("Movie")));

// Key = T [Movie Title]
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "T", CosNewString(cosDoc, false, "Movie Annotation", DICTIONARY_SIZE));

// Key = F [File Specification], Value = movieFileName
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "F", CosNewString(cosDoc, false, "C:/tmp/Surgery.avi", DICTIONARY_SIZE));

// -------------
// Movie Action
// -------------
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "S", CosNewName(cosDoc, false, ASAtomFromString("Movie")));
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "Operation", CosNewName(cosDoc, false, ASAtomFromString("Play")));

[PDL@adobeforums.com]

"C:\\/tmp\\/Surgery.avi"




This is not the proper way to escape slashes in a Windows path. It should be like this:

"C:\\tmp\\Surgery.avi"

Exactly like you would escape slashes in any C-String. What you have would be interpreted as:

"C:\/tmp\/Surgery.avi"

You may also want to try a device-independant path style, like:

"/C/tmp/Surgery.avi" if you want to avoid escaping slashes by using font slashes.

[miniCooper@adobeforums.com]

Hi

I just tried "C:\\tmp\\Surgery.avi" and for some reason I got the exact same error. "C:\tmp\Sur" Cannot be found..."

But, I suddenly recognized why I was getting that error. It was b/c I had my DICTIONARY_SIZE set to 10 -> Which only takes the first 10 characters of the path :)

So, in case anyone else has this issue, make sure you specify the correct file path as well as

// Key = F [File Specification], Value = movieFileName
#define DICTIONARY_SIZE 30

CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "F", CosNewString(cosDoc, false, "/C/tmp/Surgery.avi", DICTIONARY_SIZE));

Thanks PDL for your help!!! :)

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

Very risky coding, as it relies on counting. C can do that for you.
Instead of

#define DICTIONARY_SIZE 30

CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "F", CosNewString(cosDoc, false,
"/C/tmp/Surgery.avi", DICTIONARY_SIZE));

try something like

#define FILE_NAME "/C/tmp/Surgery.avi"
CosDictPutKeyString(dictMovie, "F", CosNewString(cosDoc, false,
FILE_NAME, strlen(FILE_NAME)));


Aandi Inston

[miniCooper@adobeforums.com]

Oh, right...that is a much better approach -> using the "strlen()" method. :)

Thanks. I'll definitely update my code!