Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Author: dust
License: Public Domain
Date: 2011.06.06
Compatibility: 10.5, 10.6
Categories:
Required plugins:
movie exporter, Panel Plug

This simple plugin opens a panel dialog window letting users select the file they want to open. it then outputs the files location as a string. It is set to return folders incase you want to return a directory location as well as it has input to specify which file types to open.

In addition there is also a save panel letting you get the saved file name and directory. if you enter a name specified other then the filetypes specified by structure it will give you a warning to use both extensions etc... to run the sample file you open a movie get its location then save the movie to new location. example needs movie exporter plugin. (included)

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

heres is the source and panel plug.

PreviewAttachmentSize
PanelPlug.zip2.4 MB

itsthejayj's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Wheres my like button! 'like' this. Very useful. I noticed you've included the apple movie exporter plugin. Have you done any work to the original plugin dust?

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

no thats just the dev exporter plugin. i need to modify it though so i can have access to the codecs selection and include an audio file. i was thinking of trying to do this with some of the new AVFoundation stuff.

monobrau's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Hi Dust,

Just tried it, it works but it gives the same behaviour I had earlier with the commandlinetool, like described here:

http://kineme.net/forum/Discussion/General/CreateNewFolder#comment-14552

The billboard doubles in size each time the panel plugin is triggered.

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

yeah i noticed that. I'm at the lab using lion right now and everything qc is f@#$% i thought that was the problem being lion. apparently it has something to do with calling up the window out of thin air or says the thread you linked to.

when calling a panel from inside a qtz application i am able to pull the panel down from the qc view, without any problems or interruptions . thats all ok but defats the purpose of this plugin. as this plugin is supposed to circumnavigate the need to publish and bind ports in your application context.

not all is lost, i just get confused sometimes when making plugins thinking they behave like applications. it seems i can just push out the ui stuff on to the main thread which would be qc itself. not sure if in that case the window would pop up out of the editor instead of the viewer. either that or i can make a custom GCD queue to dispatch panel ?

and if non of that works i will a bummed because this plugin will not save anytime but in the context of using this inside the qc application i can certainly push the panel to the settings pane of the plugin xib. in which case you can easily open and save things via the patch itself. the window will just not pop up i guess it will contained within patch. ; )

no worries... i thought this would be useful as well. i will be home in a few hours and test this thing in snow leopard. the latest lion seed lets say is broken in regards to to many things qc to even file a bug reports on. i don't know whats wrong with me i told my self i wasn't going to update to any beta systems after SL but now i have apps to develop and thought i could get a head start on lion. i was wrong.

monobrau's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

I remember that there also was this plugin:

http://kineme.net/forum/Discussion/Programming/PathOpenPanelPlugin

It worked well, only downside I can remember was that it didn't work with quartzbuilder. The source is included as well, maybe it could be of some help.

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Sweet yeah that's the plugin I was thinking about. I will take a look at the code. Seems like people say it works. It seems run modal open panel is deprecated I lion so I'm interested in seeing how this is implemented. Should be hme in a few. Expect an update. Did you get the audio plugin working ?

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

this plugin does the same thing ;( after you load a second or third time the image gets bigger. going to read that other thread agin see what mr wright is saying then try some of the things i mentioned.

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

i sorted out the issues with open and save messing up viewer. the example shows how to open and save a 10 second movie file.

for what its worth to anybody the source is included. i'm still not entirely certain as to what was causing the problem i can tell you what i did to fix it though. it seems this is one of those rouge problems as apparently it has happened in other instances.

all i did was create a separate custom thread one for save and one for open. when the user trigers the open or save actions in qc's execution loop, i create a new custom thread method and start it. then i run all the open and save stuff in their respective threads. once the url's have been made i send them back to the main thread so qc can set the output ports.

i used threads because the concurrency programing guide suggested real time work should be done with threads rather than dispatch queues. i think this problem could be solved with dispatch queues though just as easily.

have a go with the new plugin. there are inspector settings ;)

PreviewAttachmentSize
PanelPlug 2.zip327.14 KB

monobrau's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Cool! It works with quartzbuilder as well, that could be really handy some time. A feature request, when you find spare time, it would be nice to be able to select multiple files in the open window.

Thanks for sharing!

dust's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

no problem was going to get to that sooner or later. i all ready flagged the panel to select multiple files. now.... (see attached) there is a structured output for multiple files. in v4 i will put the file types back in. i sort of like it without the file type restrictions. what do you think ?

PreviewAttachmentSize
PanelPlug 3.zip328.56 KB

monobrau's picture
Re: Panel Plugin (Composition by dust)

Cool! File type restrictions could be handy in occasions where you want only image files/movies/plists/qtz/mesh etc. to be selected. It would be a nice addition besides the option without any restrictions.