Integrate sound playing within BBPro

[FairfieldPhoto]

Hi!

I know that I can play my Nikon D2Hs sound files from BBPro, but the way it plays could be improved. When I click on the sound file indicator, I get a pop-up sound player that stays open after the sound is played. If I am listening to sound files for 20 or 30 competitor rounds on a chip, I have to remember to close the play each time or I end up with a bunch of these applet windows open. Since my workflow involves listening to the details of the shot on the audio file while I key things into IPTC, I find that I have to start sound file playing, switch back to BBPro, get into the IPTC data, enter the data, and THEN remember to go back and kill the applet. Ugh.

Couldn't you just play the sound from within BBPro without calling a separate app?

-Mike

[Chris Breeze]

BBPro simply asks Windows to open the sound file which typically plays it in Windows Media Player. Whether this opens a new player window or loads the sound file in an already open player window will depend on what media player you use. I'd prefer not to have to write a WAV file player window just for BBPro.

[FairfieldPhoto]

Thanks for the quick response Chris.

You may want to just take a peek at the code to do that. I wrote a lot of software for windows in my "younger days" and the mciSendString function contained in the winmm.dll will play a wav file. You really don't need anything else like volume controle or other features for your app. Just play the wav file.

The syntax I used for VB 6 was:

Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias _
"mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal _
lpstrReturnString As Any, ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal _
hwndCallback As Long) As Long

I assume that the function syntax is similar in C/C++. I don't know C/C++ since I moved into other roles after my VB programming days.

Just something to consider for the future...

There are just two features missing in BBPro that keep me from migrating my workflow 100% to BB/DownloaderPro from my other tool: 1) Smooth sound file integration and 2) text replacement of IPTC fields. I will craft a few thoughts on the value of text replacement in the future.

-Mike