Screen Menu to Show mixed .exe and mp4

[Johnwnjr]

Please can someone set out a step by step way to have a menu on screen to run mixed sequences of files .exe and mp4 video.  Or perhaps it cannot be done? John

[tom95521]

Hi John,

My first thought would be to import the video into PTE and create a EXE slideshow instead of launching a video player. PTE  viewer engine is a very good video player and supports many video formats/codecs.

Tom

 

[Lin Evans]

Hi John,

I'm afraid there is no easy way to do this. With executable code which has been created with the same version of PTE as your menu, you can use buttons or other objects and the feature "run slideshow with return" and as Tom points out you can run the video as an executable if it will play smoothly on your system that way.

The problem with running video from a player is that once your video player has finished playing, you must exit manually and there is no practical way to get back to your menu. 

Best regards,

Lin

[jkb]

you can easily set VLC Player to 'quit at end of Playlist' so that it will exit straight back to the menu.

I run exe and MP4  etc all the time from the same Menu like this.

Simply set a text object with the title of your show.
On Mouse click set it to 'run Application or Open File' & have VLC Player as your default player for MP4, Mov, Avi etc
You can set it up to always open up fullscreen & not show the file name or other on screen commands

Exe files made with different versions of PTE can also easily be run using the 'Run Application' command

Apart from a brief black flash when launching the exe or MP4 it is seemless wth the Menu

We have just run the Great Northern Festival with 55 entries last weekend.

The AV's were a mixture of PTE Exe, ProShow Exe, Wings Exe and mov & MP4 made with different programs as well as PTE

Jill

 

 

 

 

[Lin Evans]

Jill,

On none of my systems does "run application" return control to a menu?

Lin

[jt49]

l do it in a similar way as Jill. I prefer a portable version of MPC-HC in the folder of the overall presentation. Calling the player can be done using a relative path, and the relative path to the video is added as parameter. The advantage of this method is that you can move the presentation folder to other machines. Of course you have to set the options of MPC-Hc that it starts at full screen and exits at end of playback.

[tom95521]

With PTE 10 it seems like it would be easier just to create an EXE for each video with a button action "Run slideshow with return" back to the menu.

Tom

[jkb]

2 hours ago, Lin Evans said:

Jill,

On none of my systems does "run application" return control to a menu?

Lin

I have been doing it that way for years & never had any problems.

The only slight problem is that sometimes a Proshow exe will start behind the Menu, but usually works OK the 2nd time it is started.
When running a competition I always start each show & then ESC out of it.
Then everything normally runs smoothly.

You have to take the full path out of the run command & just leave the show name in ""

Also the Menu exe has to be in the same folder as all the shows.
This then allows you to run on any computer as JT49 says

 

5 minutes ago, tom95521 said:

With PTE 10 it seems like it would be easier just to create an EXE for each video with a button action "Run slideshow with return" back to the menu.

Tom

Tom when running a competition the entries can be made with any versions of PTE or any other program so you cannot use Run Slideshow

If only running your own shows then there is no problem

Jill
 

[Lin Evans]

Jill,

Do you mean you have to start the menu manually after each show?  Though that will work, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a menu in my opinion.

When I create a menu made with a different version of PTE than the exe show and use "run application" to run the exe, when the exe ends the menu has to be called manually to continue with more choices. I suppose that's better than scrolling through a folder looking for the next show, but certainly not as versatile or elegant as using "run slideshow with return." I realize that your executable competition shows are created with myriad different software so this is not something you can use that feature with, but I suspect John, the OP, is referring to PTE shows and not shows made by other software. So if his system has sufficient power to run the video inside the PTE executable container, I think Tom's idea might be his best answer. That is unless there is something I'm totally missing about how to make the menu automatically reappear after the exe or video player exits. Are you saying that if all shows are in a common folder with the menu.exe, that the menu returns without being called? That is when the exe show is over, the menu is still active and you just click it in the task bar?

Best regards,

Lin

[Johnwnjr]

Manu thanks for all your suggestions, I think putting the video into PTE may be my best option, but I will look into the other options. John

[jkb]

Make a one or more slide exe in PTE - any version.

Set each slide (or the whole project) to wait for keypress. List the names of your shows, I use text objects but you can use images, rectangle, blank frames or buttons.

Set each object to run application and navigate to the correct show. Remove the full path and just leave the show name in quotes.

Make sure mouse is not hidden or you can't click on anything.

Launch your menu exe and then single click the show you want to run. When that show finishes it will return to the menu screen and you can click on the next show etc.

Jill