> > I know that Quicktime for Windows now comes with an ActiveX component. If a
> > Quicktime VR object file were embedded into a PowerPoint presentation, would
> > it work properly? Or is the ActiveX component more limited than I think?
>
> I believe George Birbilis will respond on this, but if he does not see it
> here is a link about it.
> http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppqtvr.html
> There is a link to George Birbilis PowerPoint Control on the page.
Thanks for the plug Hans ;o)
I was away for a week of vacations to Italy (very nice but very hot & humid the Laco Majore & Ivrea areas btw)
So CC'ing all people who replied to this and another related thread on QuickTime & PowerPoint
My QTVRControlX (don't get fooled by the name, it supports any QT movie, it just is specialized with more support for QTVR) is at
http://members.fortunecity.com/birbilis/QT4Delphi
For more info see my website above. There are also links to two pages of PowerPoint & QTVRControlX how-to done by third parties that tried/liked this control:
* Champage Design:
http://www.champagne-design.com/ppt/guru05.html
* InDezine:
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppqtvr.html
------
Seems Apple's ActiveX control doesn't implement the IDataObject and some similar optional OLE/ActiveX interfaces, resulting in it not being able to be inserted in PowerPoint (it's a host that requires a bit more "programming" interfaces to be implemented by the control compared to Internet Explorer). At least that was the case with QT5's Apple ActiveX control
PowerPoint itself is QuickTime agnostic and it does correctly to be so. But it's a generic OLE control and ActiveX control container (ActiveX controls is a lighter spec than OLE controls, mostly a subset of them but with some Internet-targeted additions). It also supports OLE's Linking & Embedding so it can host frames of other OLE document servers in it, support In-Place Activation & Editing, support Menu/Toolbar negotiation between the application and its hosted controls, have controls store their data inside the PowerPoint document (structured storage - IDataStorage and IDataStream interfaces if I remember well) etc. Similar goes to other MS-Office applications like MSWord and MSExcel, or for Visio (was original a third party app, then MS bought it) and other third party applications that function as OLE control or ActiveX control containers or as OLE & ActiveX Document servers.
The OLE spec. is really big but it's a lot of rich component/application integration functionality it specifies. The good thing is that at least with the ActiveX spec. many of the OLE interfaces one had to implement at their controls are optional (e.g. no need to implement menu negotiation if you don't care to have your control insert icons on the PowerPoint menubars/toolbars)
My control is written as a native VCL control in Delphi / Object Pascal and converted to an ActiveX control using Delphi's ActiveX control wizard (+ patched up a bit manually to add property pages, fix it to use unsigned numeric types which are automation safe [so that it can be scripted by VBA and VBScript] etc.). Seems Delphi implements at some base class the necessery plumping that Apple hasn't implemented in their control (they could easily check my control's .OCX file with OleView or similar tool to see which interfaces it implements).
Also, in COM/OLE there's the concept of "Component Categories", one of them being for "Insertable" objects. My control doesn't yet implement this so to add it in PowerPoint you can't use "Insert Object" menu to insert a movie directly in PowerPoint and use my control to render it (plan to enable this in the future), but have to use the "VB toolbar" of PowerPoint and press the Toolbox icon to show you all of the installed ActiveX controls in the system and select "QTVRControlX control" item (maybe could install a toolbar/macro icon for this), then right click the newly inserted control and from the properties pages use the "..." button to browse to the movie file you want (shows a standard quicktime file dialog with preview). I could also add support for being able to embed the whole movie into the PowerPoint file apart from referencing it as an external file I think, but that's not a priority for now I think
BTW, the very old QuickTime for Windows from Apple should be working OK with VB6 and with PowerPoint (showing only old QTVR 1.0 or just linear Cinepak movies), cause it seemed to support MCI (Media Control Interface - that very old MS API that Office still uses) and was an ActiveX Document Server. Don't know why they removed this functionality from QuickTime 3.0 and higher
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Birbilis <email@hidden>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ QuickTime VCL and ActiveX controls (for PowerPoint/VB/Delphi etc.)
+ Plugs VCL and ActiveX controls (InterProcess/Internet communication)
+ TransFormations, VB6 forms to ASP.net WebForms convertion
http://www.kagi.com/birbilis
+ Robotics
http://www.mech.upatras.gr/~robgroup
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