Playing Audio on the iPad

[David Jondreau]

Has anyone gotten audio to play by script on iOS?

The only way I've been able to get playback is clicking into a container field (set to aduio/video) and selecting "Play" from the pop up.

It works on Pro if I set "Start playback automatically". But not Go.

[adellos]

I couldn't make it work and this note from FileMaker Pro 12 Advanced's help doesn't sound promising:

In Filemaker Go, content in container fields is displayed by the iOS like other iOS audio, video, and PDF files.

I could imagine the FMI engineers not wanting a setting on a field to automatically switch out of the layout context to the iOS quicktime playback screen.

Maybe a web viewer? On FileMakerGo it will play YouTube in the layout, so I'm guessing if it pointed to a page that had the audio file and auto-played it that would work. Of course it's no longer a pure FileMaker solution at that point.

One interesting thing was that I could airplay the youtube video running in the web container. Kinda neat!

Anthony

[David Jondreau]

I don't know if FM Go needs to use Quicktime to play sounds. You can "Beep" in FM Go. And pretty much all apps play sounds natively.

This needs to work offline, and I'm not sure how to get the Web Viewer to read a local file.

[adellos]

Fair enough. What I was getting at is that it looks like FM Go implements the "MPMoviePlayerViewController" class to handle media playback from container controls, and that that control is only fullscreen;so I get the design/engineering decision to not let a check box setting made at design time switch the whole UI context every time a record is entered.

What I think might work as a pattern is:

1. storing media files in containers
   
2. saving the media file in the container to the FileMaker Go Documents or Temp path with a generic name "sound_file.mp3" using Export Field Contents
   
3. Opening that generic file in a web view
   

Unfortunately, when I tried to do a test along those lines, I got an obscure iOS web view related error. "Frame load interrupted". This may be because i chose mp3 as my format, it may not.

So it appears that FileMaker Go was able to find the file, but the web viewer had difficulty playing it back.

Hope some of that might be helpful!

Anthony

[PBrooks]

I'm having a similar problem to those mentioned and was hoping someone could comment on it. I create a database under FM Pro 12 Advanced, store a small movie in a container field and then transfer the database (via email) to an iPhone 5 running FMGO 12. I have a script that operates so that when a certain location is entered (sensed by the location function) it brings up a particular record with the movie in the container field. Under FMPRO 12, I have it set to automatically display the movie when that record is displayed and it works fine. When the same file runs under FMGO on the iPhone, I have to actually touch the container field to get the movie to play and then it will only play in full screen. This is a show-stopper for my application. Anyone have any ideas as to how to make this work the same as it does under FMPro 12? (I should mention - no the location function does not work on FMPro 12 - however when I force the application to go to a record with a movie file, the file starts playing in the container immediately - on FMGO, I want the application to go to the record based on the latitude and longitude and then immediately start playing the movie in the container in that record - it goes to the record just fine, just won't play the movie until I actually touch the container)

--Peter Brooks