June 22, 2001 - Detecting a Flash Movie's Length

Yehuda Shiran June 22, 2001
Detecting a Flash Movie's Length
Tips: June 2001

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

In some of your applications you may need to use Flash movies and JavaScript directly, without any prepackaged APIs such as FlashSound JavaScript API. You will enjoy more features, methods, and properties, but you'll have to take care of all the tiny details that are taken for granted when using FlashSound API, for example.

One of the "tiny" details is embedding the Flash object. The JavaScript file flashcheck2.js does exactly this, as well as other stuff. For example, it checks whether a Flash player exists (Flash plug-in or ActiveX control), and whether its version is higher than the minimum required by the application.

Use the TGetProperty() Flash method to get attributes of the Flash movie. One of the properties is TOTAL FRAMES. You may get this property, but you cannot set it. The TOTAL FRAMES property designates the length in frames of the movies. You can get Flash properties by their sequence numbers. You get a property like this:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, propertyNumber);
The CURRENT FRAME property is no. 5, so you get its value by going:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, 5);
Play the following movie by clicking the Play link. Get the TOTAL FRAMES of the movie by clicking the Get TOTAL FRAMES link. Of course, you don't have to play the movie to find its length:

Rewind | Play | Get TOTAL FRAMES

Here is the source code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="flashcheck2.js"></SCRIPT>
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Rewind(); return false">Rewind</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Play(); return false">Play</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:alert(mySwf2.TGetProperty('/', 5)); return false">Get TOTAL FRAMES</A>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  var mySwf2 = Flash_embedSWF("opener.swf", "opener");
</SCRIPT>