Movie options
Movie control panel
The movie control panel allows the movie to be stopped and
rewound as well as muting of the sound. If you choose to display the control panel it always
appears directly underneath the movie screen.
After displaying movie screen
Once the applet is displayed the movie need not be started. If the control panel is
also displayed then the user can choose to start the movie when they are ready.
At end of movie
When the movie finishes the applet creator can choose to have the movie terminate or loop.
Termination can involve simply ending the movie in which case the last frame of the movie
continues to be shown or the option can be selected to blank out the movie screen in which
case the resources that the movie consumes on the client computer are immediately released.
Location of software to play movie
The software to play the movie can either be included in the applet or the applet can
expect to find the Java Media Framework plugin installed on the client machine.
Expecting the plugin has the advantage that the maximum numbers of media types is catered
for and that the best possible performance can be achieved using a version of JMF
that is tuned for a particlular platform (eg. the Windows version). There are two
disadvantages:
- The person looking at the applet has to have taken the time to download the JMF plugin
- The Netscape browser will display a number of dialog screens asking the user if
additional privileges can be granted to the applet.
Including the player software with the applet does not require a plugin and will not
cause Netscape to ask questions. The disadvantages are:
- The extra download overhead between of between 250K and 300K
- Certain formats are not supported, in particular MPEG
- Performance may be jerky although this is not always the case
Percentage screen size chnage
This number is the percentage by which the movie screen should be made bigger or smaller.
It is recommended that this option only be used when the movie is played with the plugin
as there are some flicker problems with the using the all Java movie player.