[DrLex]

I am looking for a simple way to play some background music in a game. The music is in MIDI format and the most obvious choice would be to use QuickTime. The game is based on the SDL library, which also offers music playback, but there are weird problems with this and the quality is not that good, so it would be better to send the music directly to QuickTime.

I already managed to write a simple working test application which uses NSMovieView. About 4 lines of code do the trick, which is really neat. But, there is one problem: the music refuses to loop, although I used setLoopMode, and loopMode indicates that the loop mode is set successfully.

I found another thread in this forum which was about the same problem. The proposed solution was to create a "real NSMovieView" instead of using [[NSMovieView alloc] init] like I did. However, I am a total novice concerning Cocoa programming, and worse is that - as far as I understand what is meant here - I'll need to draw a 'physical' NSMovieView in some window in Interface Builder. The problem is that there are no windows in the project because SDL handles video output directly. How do I solve this?

[Gametes]

I don't understand. You want to play music, right? Then why are you making a movieView?

The simplest way to play music is with NSSound.
Read about

Code:
- (id)initWithContentsOfFile: (NSString *)path byReference: (BOOL)byRef

to create your sound file,

Code:
- (BOOL)play

to play it, and the delegate method

Code:
- (void)sound: (NSSound *)sound didFinishPlaying: (BOOL)aBool

to loop it.

Or am I missing something?

[Angus_D]

Doesn't SDL have some sort of audio stuff?

[DrLex]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Doesn't SDL have some sort of audio stuff?

Yes, but for MIDI playback, it does some weird conversions in order to be compatible with OS 9, and ths decreases the quality of the music.
Moreover, I get weird malloc errors when loading a new song, and when I debug, this error seems to happen within a standard QuickTime function call. So I think it's easier to route the sound directly to QuickTime instead.
Anyway, I'll try it the NSSound way, thanks for the advice.

[DrLex]

Originally posted by Gametes:
I don't understand. You want to play music, right? Then why are you making a movieView?

The simplest way to play music is with NSSound.

Hmm, it appears that NSSound can only play AIFF, WAV and NeXT SND. I need to play MIDI files...

[Rickster]

You might be able to create an NSMovieView in a window that's never put onscreen (or is effectively obscured by the fullscreen graphics context your game uses). Haven't tried it, but it might work.

And of course, you can always drop down to the actual QuickTime APIs...

[Gametes]

I think you can just create a movieView and never insert it into a view hierarchy. It can still be called, though. i haven't tried this.
If you must insert it, just have it set on hidden (10.3)

[Brass]

A window can be open but not displayed, if that helps (ie, orderOut:)

[Ghoser777]

This isn't documented, but the trick is to create a window with Rect {0,0,0,0}, add an NSMovieView instance to the contentView's subviews, and then order the window front. Just creating the NSMovieView instance will cause no music to be played, as I had to find out the hard way.

Matt Fahrenbacher

[Tim2 at Omni]

I had to do this once. My solution was not to create a hidden NSMovieView, but to create an NSMovie instance:

movie = [[NSMovie alloc] initWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:moviePath] byReference:NO];

Take a look at NSMovie.h and you'll see the following method:

- (void*/*Movie*/)QTMovie;

You can pass this directly into QuickTime, like so:

qtMovie = [movie QTMovie];
StartMovie(qtMovie);
...
if (IsMovieDone(qtMovie))
StopMovie(qtMovie);

Check out Movies.h (in the QuickTime framework) for more info.

Hope that helps!