Indigo Rose Software

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8?

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:46:34 +0000

You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Our goal was to improve everything you love about AutoPlay Media Studio, while pushing it fully into the realm of rapid application development (RAD).

While AutoPlay Media Studio’s roots are in making beautiful interactive menus and launchers for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM applications, savvy software developers have been using it for years to rapidly prototype and build full-scale graphically rich software applications.

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 takes it to a whole other level, bringing visual WYSIWYG software development to the masses. What would take a professional programmer days or weeks to build using traditional software development tools like C, C++, Java or even Visual Basic can now be created by just about anyone in less time than you’d have ever thought possible.

While AutoPlay Media Studio is still the best tool out there for making autorun/autoplay menus, its true strength in visual programming now shines through. There’s no faster or better software development tool for combining multimedia elements like video, image, sound, music and animation with advanced business logic, database manipulation, text parsing, web interaction, data collection and graphically-rich data visualization.

You’ll turn to AutoPlay Media Studio 8 over and over again to quickly create full-featured software applications. It’s destined to become an indispensable part of your software development toolbox! Here’s just a taste of some of the features new to AutoPlay Media Studio 8…

NEW! Faster & More Powerful Lua 5.1 Scripting Engine
AutoPlay Media Studio 8′s scripting engine is now faster, more powerful and much more extensible. The Lua 5.1 system features a new module system, incremental garbage collection, new mechanism for varargs, new syntax for long strings and comments, mod and length operators, metatables for all types and a fully reentrant parser.

NEW! Support for Lua 5.1 Code Modules
With the new scripting engine upgrade comes compatibility with Lua 5.1 modules. You now have access to a wealth of free Lua code you can download and use in your AutoPlay Media Studio 8 projects. In most cases you simply copy the module files into your project and “require” them in your script. Just some of the useful modules out there include Bit Operation, Date, Canvas Draw, Imaging Tool, GD, Crypto, Colors, Speech, Alien, Social (Twitter), CURL, Regular Expression Parsing and so much more. It’s a whole treasure chest of addons and tools just waiting for you!

NEW! Blu-ray Disc Support
Do your projects contain huge database and video files? AutoPlay Media Studio 8 now includes full support for burning directly to Blu-Ray media (BD-R, BD-RE). The integrated Bluray disc burning allows you to publish your project directly to single layer and dual-layer BD-R and BD-RE media, supporting 25 GB, 50 GB and even 100 GB formats.

NEW! Application Styles / Skinning
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 gives you the freedom to create applications that look exactly the way you want. Perhaps you prefer that your programs to take on the same appearance as the operating system (e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 Aero)? Or do you want them to be entirely customized with completely custom drawn background images, buttons and window shapes? Or perhaps you’d like to simply make use of the hundreds of ready-to-use MSSTYLES themes (like OS/X Tiger and Panther) that you can download on the Internet? In any case, AutoPlay Media Studio makes it possible – and easy!

NEW! Integrated Database Access
It’s never been easier to write database applications using AutoPlay Media Studio! Easily connect to a variety of popular local and remote/Internet database systems including MySQL, SQLite3, ODBC, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Execute any SQL statements you desire like CREATE, INSERT and more – even easily retrieve data results using a row-by-row cursor system. Features full integration with our fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, plus intelligent code completion.

NEW! PDF Object
AutoPlay Media Studio now features integrated support for displaying PDF documents right in your application. This highly requested feature also gives you full control over the display and formatting. You can show/hide toolbars, scrollbars and borders. Layout options include “Single Page”, “One Column”, “Two Columns” and “User Preference”. View options include “Fit Page”, “Fit Page Width”, “Fit Page Height” and “Actual Size”.

NEW! PDF Actions
Take control of the PDF object with 18 easy-to-use actions. Fully integrated into the fill-in-the-blanks Action Wizard, you’ll be able to easily create dynamic applications to work with PDF files. Actions are provided to Print, Load, Navigate, Zoom, Resize, Hide and much more.

NEW! QuickTime Object
Thanks to the new Apple QuickTime object, Your AutoPlay Media Studio applications are now compatible with over 80 video, audio and image formats. Video formats include .MOV, .DV, .M4V, .MP4 and dozens more – including the amazing h.264 format. Audio formats include .AAC, .AIF, .M4A, .MP3, etc. Visual formatting options let you lock an aspect ratio, resize the media to fit the object dimensions or center it within the object area. Border styles include 3D, plain or none.

NEW! QuickTime Actions
The Quicktime object by itself is great – but a Quicktime object plus 22 built-in high-level actions is just plain awesome! Brought together, your AutoPlay Media Studio actions have exceptional control over the QuickTime object. Using simple script commands you can Play, Seek, Set Volume, Load, Mute, View Full Screen, Hide, Show and much more. Your only limit is your imagination.

NEW! xButton Object
If you’re trying to create an application that blends in beautifully with the operating system, the new xButton object is just what the doctor ordered. However, that’s just the beginning! The new xButton object supports far more customization than was previously possible. Now you can modernize your applications by adding “icon” images to your buttons, plus you can “markup” the text however you desire! This object lets you control the relative placement of button text and button images; choose between normal and toggle styles; adjust fonts and colors; and even markup you text using dozens of XAML tags – including hyperlinks right on your buttons! By default, the xButton styles itself according to whatever operating system it is being run on. If your application is running on Vista, the button looks like a standard Vista button. If you’re running it on Windows 7, it looks like Windows 7. However, you can easily override this and choose from many included styles like Flat, Office 2000, Office XP or many different Office 2007 styles. Or hundreds of MSSTYLES themes… The options are endless.

NEW! Checkbox List Object
Checkbox lists are a long awaited addition to AutoPlay Media Studio! We’ve integrated this feature into the existing Listbox object – you just need to turn it on. Once you do, you can easily present lists of items with corresponding checkboxes. Actions are included to get and set the checkbox state for any listbox item with ease. You’ll find dozens of great uses for this one!

NEW! Rolling Code Data Security
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 adds another layer of protection to your applications and scripts. A unique random encryption code is now generated every time you build your project, making “hacking” of your applications much more difficult. As we all know, anyone determined enough can break any protection system given enough time and resources, but the use of rolling codes renders generic attacks ineffective. You can now sleep a little easier!

NEW! Multiple Timers
You’re no longer limited to just one timer event per page! You can now set as many “named” timers as you want. Having multiple timers running really opens up the creative possibilities for animations, games, status updates and dozens of other applications.

NEW! Service Actions
Easily control Windows Services using the seven new actions included in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Everything you need is included, such as Create, Start, Stop, Pause, Delete, Query and Continue.

NEW! FTPWI Actions
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes a set of built-in FTP actions, enabling your application to easily download files over the Internet from FTP servers. These new FTP actions make use of the WinINet API to ensure compliance with the RFC 959 File Transfer Protocol specifications. Actions include FTPWI.Download, FTPWI.GetErrorInfo and FTPWI.GetFileSize.

NEW! System Restore Actions
This trio of system restore actions are extremely powerful and essential for any application that might want to make system changes or install software in a failsafe manner. By creating a system restore point using System.SetRestorePoint before making changes to the computer, the user can easily rollback those changes using the operating system’s “restore” feature (found on Windows Vista and Windows 7). Actions include System.IsSystemRestoreAvailable, System.SetRestorePoint and System.RemoveRestorePoint.

NEW! Dialog.ComboBox Action
Here’s an action that’ll find a lot of use! The Dialog.ComboBox action is used to pop up a dialog box presenting the user with a drop-down list of items they can choose from. You simply pass in a list of items to select from, choose if you’d like them sorted or not and whether or not to restrict the user to just the items in the list, or allow them to type in their own text response. It’s a fast and compact way to get user input, while offering suggestions to them at the same time!

NEW! Balloon Tooltips and Extended Tooltips
In addition to the standard popup tooltips you’re used to from previous versions, AutoPlay Media Studio 8 now lets you display Balloon tooltips! It’s an extremely attractive option for presenting context sensitive help within your application. It’s also much more useful than the old style tooltips, as you can use multiple lines of text to present your instructions. In fact, multi-line tooltips were so useful, we also added the feature to the standard looking popup as “extended” tooltips.

NEW! Modernized Visual Workspace
AutoPlay Media Studio has always looked pretty slick, but that wasn’t good enough. The entire project workspace has been overhauled. Selection boxes, toolbars, context menus – everything has been redone using a consistent color palette, light source and 3D perspective. You spend a lot of time working on your projects. Your tools should serve to increase your productivity, rather than distract you. With AutoPlay Media Studio 8, you’ll find everything is more logically arranged and attractively presented – so you can get more done.

NEW! Plugin SDK v2
Action Plugins and Object Plugins are one of the best features of AutoPlay Media Studio. They allow 3rd party software developers to extend and expand the product in an extremely integrated and seamless fashion. By simply dropping a plugin into your project, you can easily save yourself hours of work and add significant functionality to your application. The great news is that with AutoPlay Media Studio 8, plugin developers can now fully leverage the advantages of the Lua 5.1 language. The Plugin SDK v2 is available for free download on the indigorose.com website.

Improved! Grid Object
Working with data grids in AutoPlay Media Studio is more useful than ever, especially with the new integrated database features in v8. As always, the grid object allows you to add spreadsheets, grids and list controls to your applications. With over 110 scriptable actions, it is extremely powerful. To help you easily preload data, you can now even specify a CSV (comma separated value) data file at design time.

Improved! Flash Object with ExternalInterface Support
The Adobe Flash object now supports calling and responding to Flash actionscript functions with the addition of the new “Flash.CallFunction” and “Flash.SetReturnValue” actions and new “OnFlashCall” event. Access to Flash’s external API opens up many new uses for the Flash object and advanced interaction with your AutoPlay Media Studio application such as playing FVL video files using a Flash loader.

Improved! Web Object
The web object now uses the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer SDK. New scrollbar and border options have been added to give you increased visual control over the object – allowing you to better integrate web pages into your AutoPlay Media Studio applications.

NEW! Stack Traceback for Syntax Errors
We’ve made it easier for you to debug syntax errors in your scripts by providing you with better error reports. Error messages now include additional details about exactly where the problem occurred – right down to the event name and line number!

NEW! Debug Message Logging
Testing and debugging your projects is much easier in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. You can now send all debug message to a human-readable text format log file, to a debug window or simultaneously to both locations. Between the automatic “Trace Mode” logging, “Event Context” information and “Last Error” actions, you’ve got a formidable collection of tools to help squash those pesky bugs and logic errors!

NEW! Eyedropper Color Picker
Easily match colors thanks to the new eyedropper style color picker. Integrated into all color choosers, simply move your mouse pointer off the dialog and watch it turn into an eyedropper cursor. Click on the color of any pixel on your screen and voila – you’ve automatically set the color to match.

NEW! Updated Dependency Modules
All of the dependency modules have been updated in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Dependency Modules make it fast and easy to detect whether or not common 3rd party software applications and technologies are installed on the user’s computer. AutoPlay Media Studio 8 can detect the current versions of such products as Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, Apple QuickTime, Windows Media Player and more. If the required product is not detected, the user will be alerted to the problem and conveniently directed to the appropriate website for download and installation.

NEW! Windows Object Styles
In order to enable you to create applications that can look and feel exactly like those created using traditional Windows platform SDK development tools, we went through all of our existing objects and updated them. For example, objects like the Checkbox, Radio Button and Progress Bar will now take on the look that users expect to see on their operating system. On Windows 7, they’ll look consistent with the standard operating system theme. On Windows XP, they’ll look like XP – and so on. The best part though is that they’ll also now respond correctly to changes in the application theme or MSSTYLES skin files that are supported in AutoPlay Media Studio 8. It all adds up to a 100% professional look!

NEW! Visually Identify Plugin Actions
The Action Wizard now marks any actions that are contained in Action Plugins with a “plugin” identifier. This makes it much easier to quickly identify what is built-in to AutoPlay Media Studio and what you’ve added later through 3rd party additions. It’s especially handy when you’re looking for documentation, help files, samples and technical support.

Improved! Video Object Transport Skins
The Video object has been modernized with a variety of new graphic styles. Choose from attractive new blue, green and gray skins. If you don’t find a style you like, it’s super easy to create your own video transport skins using Photoshop or any other graphics editor. We’ve also made the skin format more flexible, removing the constraining height restrictions that may have hampered your creativity in the past.

Improved! Paragraph Object Scrollbar Styles
The Paragraph object in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been updated to default to Windows 7 style scrollbars. This will give any of your scrolling textboxes a much more up-to-date visual appearance. Of course, you can still make your own scrollbar styles from scratch (or download shared skins from http://www.autoplaymediastudio.com) or choose from old favorites such as Chrome, Euro, Corporate, Charcoal, Industrial and more.

Improved! Application Startup Dialog
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is all about helping you get things done faster and easier. Even small things like the startup welcome screen have been improved! The startup screen now gives you fast access to multiple recently used projects, one-click restore of the last used project, or simply creating a new project using a template or blank project. Additionally, an integrated RSS feed keeps you updated on product improvements, updates, bug fixes and news!

Improved! Project Explorer Window
The Project Explorer in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been revamped to give you a better overall view of your project. Things like better icons, collapsible Dialog and Page categories and better visual indications for hidden and locked objects will be much appreciated. Additional context-sensitive right-click menus have been added and reworked to present you with only the most appropriate commands for working with objects, pages, dialogs and events.

Improved! Quick Script Snippets
A variety of changes were made to the script editor to help more quickly write your code. Of course the popular Action Wizard, Code Completion and Intellisense are still there to guide you. We’ve also expanded and reorganized the one-click “Quick Script” feature. Many common programming “snippets” are included, making it super easy to add loops, control structures and other often-used bits of script. Additionally, “object tables” have been moved into their own category in order to help you find what you’re looking for at a glance.

NEW! Centralized Repository for Plugins, Templates and Addons
With all the new possibilities available to AutoPlay Media Studio 8 developers, we’ve put together a centralized archive to help organize everything. At http://www.autoplaymediastudio.com you’ll find an easy-to-navigate repository for everything related to AutoPlay Media Studio. You’ll find action plugins, object plugins, application themes, Lua modules, video transport skins, scrollbar skins, MSSTYLES skins, custom .BTN format button files, background images, project templates, example projects, scripts, audio files, tutorials, tools and lots more.

Much More…
Hundreds of other changes have made their way into AutoPlay Media Studio 8. Some visible, some hidden deep within the core… All of them designed to make AutoPlay Media Studio 8 your “go to” tool when you’re on a deadline and need to create graphically rich interactive software applications.

More Information:

Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Screenshot Gallery AutoPlay Media Studio 8’s visual approach to rapid software development...

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 (Now Available!)

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:00:42 +0000

Create powerful CD/DVD autorun menus, multimedia projects, interactive training applications and hundreds of other custom software programs in a drag and drop visual development environment.

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Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:00:38 +0000

Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create software applications for the Microsoft Windows platform? Congratulations! Your search is over…

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 delivers on the promise of rapid application development. What would normally take days or weeks to build using traditional software development tools (C, C++, Java, Visual Basic) can now be created in record time – by just about anyone. And not just simple little scripts and forms. We’re talking about full-featured interactive multimedia applications complete with web interaction, database connectivity, video playback and much more.

Now that you’ve found us, grab a cup of coffee and let’s get acquainted. You’ll more than make up the time later.

The AutoPlay Media Studio Legacy…

You’re probably already familiar with AutoPlay Media Studio. It’s been the industry standard tool for creating autorun CD/DVD/USB menus for years. (Heck, we invented the category!) All told, hundreds of millions of discs have been distributed thanks to AutoPlay Media Studio (and its grandfather, AutoPlay Menu Studio).

What you may not know is that AutoPlay Media Studio has become a secret weapon for thousands of savvy software developers, consultants and IT professionals. Realizing its unique rapid-programming potential, developers started using it to prototype and build full-scale graphically rich multimedia software applications. Once it became apparent just how much time and money they could save, there was no turning back.

Which brings us to where we are now – the release of the most significant version of AutoPlay Media Studio yet. With version 8, our goal was to improve everything software developers loved about AutoPlay Media Studio, while pushing it fully into the realm of rapid application development. We think you’re going to be extremely impressed.

Create Software Faster with AutoPlay Media Studio 8

Of course, AutoPlay Media Studio is still the best tool out there for making autorun/autoplay menus for CD/DVD-ROM, USB drives and now BLU-RAY data discs. However, with the release of AutoPlay Media Studio 8, there’s a whole new world of possibilities.

AutoPlay Media Studio’s visual approach to software creation makes it easy for you to create Windows software programs, even if you have absolutely no computer programming experience. By combining our award-winning WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) drag-and-drop development environment with a powerful (yet really easy-to-use) scripting language, AutoPlay Media Studio gives you the power to quickly create just about any software application you can dream up.

Simply drag and drop interactive objects and controls onto pages and dialog boxes, arranging their layout with your mouse. Then, adding interactivity is a snap. With a few mouse clicks you can add buttons to navigate between pages, start and stop videos, display dialog boxes and input forms, run programs, open documents, send emails, view websites, download files and so much more. The only limit is your imagination!

There’s no faster or better software development tool for combining multimedia elements (videos, images, sound effects, music and flash animations) with advanced business logic, database manipulation, text parsing, web interaction, document display (PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, Word), data collection and graphically-rich data visualization.

A Complete Software Development System

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is the result of nearly 20 years of experience in creating professional software development tools. With over 20,000 software developers using our products around the world, you are definitely in good company.

THOUSANDS OF USES
Create professional autorun CD/DVD’s and thousands of other multimedia software applications. Perfect for database programming, business application development, software prototyping, training applications, network utilities, proof of concept, software test automation and agile software development projects.

MAXIMUM COMPATIBILITY
The applications you create using AutoPlay Media Studio 8 are designed to work on the Microsoft Windows operating system. This includes Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Auto Play Media Studio 8 is designed to make developing professional applications as easy as possible, even with no previous programming experience. Drag and drop your content onto a page and then double-click to edit. It’s incredibly simple to do. Additionally, the newly revamped Project Explorer organizes everything for you (pages, dialogs, objects and events), giving you an overview of your entire project in one place.

INTERACTIVE OBJECTS
There are nearly two dozen interactive object types to choose from such as buttons, videos, web/HTML, Flash, QuickTime, PDF, checkboxes, radio buttons, edit fields, rich text, slideshows, data grids, menu bars and tree controls. Plus, add additional functionality with Object plugins created by Indigo Rose Software and other 3rd party developers.

EASY TO USE SCRIPTING LANGUAGE
Includes more than 865 high level actions with everything from XML parsing and database queries to web server script interaction, file transfers and much more. Plus, easily expand the language with drop-in Action plugins and Lua modules. The professional script editor features color syntax highlighting, code completion, function highlighting, as-you-type action prototypes, Ctrl+Space function listings, and even context-sensitive help.

ACTION WIZARD
You don’t have to be a wizard to create powerful software applications – we’ve built the wizard right into the software! Choose the action you want to use, fill in the requested information fields and the wizard writes the script for you.

PROJECT TEMPLATES
Choose from a variety of ready-to-use projects and then modify them to fit your needs. We include examples of software installer menus, electronic business cards, marketing brochures and many others.

SUPERIOR MULTIMEDIA CAPABILITIES
AutoPlay Media Studio excels at combining diverse media types into a single application. There are objects like QuickTime, Flash, Slideshow and Video among them. Even the audio handling features alone can save you weeks of work. For example, creating voiceovers on top of background music tracks are a snap. In fact, you can play up to eight channels of audio simultaneously with automatic selection of either hardware or software mixing.

MULTIPLE PUBLISHING OPTIONS
Distributing your finished project is a snap. Whether you’d like to create a single-file executable for distribution by web download or email, or burn it directly to CD-R/CD-RW, DVD±R/DVD±RW or Blu-Ray media, it just takes a few clicks. Simply insert a blank disc and the wizard will burn your project for you.

PROGRAMMING COMMUNITY
AutoPlay Media Studio developers are a friendly bunch of people. Join our online community forums where you’ll be able to share ideas, learn tips and tricks, and discover hundreds of new uses for this empowering tool.

Download a Free Trial Version

The best way to decide if AutoPlay Media Studio is right for you is to download the free 30-day trial version. The trial version is fully functional, so you’ll be able to really “kick the tires” and see what it can do. Download your free trial copy of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 today and see for yourself!

Pricing and Licensing Information

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is a steal at any price. The amount of time and money it can save you is impressive, no matter how you look at it. Go ahead and add up what a week of your time is worth, or how much a programmer or consultant would charge to write your application in a traditional development tool like Java, C++ or even Visual Basic. We’ll wait…

Here’s the punch line. AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is only $295 (US)! There’s no additional fees or royalties to pay on the applications you create. Just $295 per developer. That’s it. Plus, you even get 6 months of free technical support and software maintenance included.

So, here’s your chance! Go ahead and pull out that credit card (or ask your boss or purchasing department for theirs…) and purchase AutoPlay Media Studio 8 online. It will only take a few minutes. We’ll email you your serial number and download instructions immediately, and you can get started right away.

You have nothing to lose. If you don’t agree that AutoPlay Media Studio improves your productivity and adds value to your project, return it undeployed within 30 days for a full refund.

More Information:

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...
AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Screenshot Gallery AutoPlay Media Studio 8’s visual approach to rapid software development...

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Product Features

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:00:19 +0000

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 makes it easy to create your own interactive multimedia software. Even if you’re not a “programmer”, you’ll be creating professional projects in no time. It’s all done in a completely visual, drag-and-drop design environment. From images, text and music to video, drop-down lists and web content, you simply move things into place using your mouse. Then, you can add powerful interactivity with a built-in library of more than 865 easy to use actions.

Easy to Use Visual Development Environment
Professional Application Development Features
Drag and Drop Visual Interface Objects
Powerful, Yet Easy-to-Use Programming Language
Impressive Multimedia Handling
Easy Software Deployment Options

Visual Development Environment

Creating professional multimedia software can be both easy and fun, thanks to AutoPlay Media Studio. In fact, with our award winning WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) visual design environment, anyone can do it! Simply drag and drop your media content (text, photos, videos, Adobe Flash, QuickTime, PDF and much more) onto “pages” and then add interactivity with over 865 built-in actions. It couldn’t be easier!

Easy to Learn Visual Software Development
It couldn’t be easier to create powerful multimedia software applications. AutoPlay Media Studio is filled with wizards, tutorials, a user’s guide, context sensitive help and much more. It’s also backed up with world-class technical support options, online discussion groups, and video training lessons.

No Programming – Simple Scripting – Hardcore Coding. It’s Your Choice!
You don’t need to be a programmer to use AutoPlay Media Studio. It’s easy enough for anyone to use. While a full wizard-assisted scripting engine is available for power users, the new Quick Action tab lets new users get up to speed right away. Just fill in the blanks to handle the most popular actions like opening documents, running programs, switching pages and more. It’s really that easy!

Professional Templates to Jump Start Your Development
Choose from a variety of ready-to-use projects and then modify them to fit your needs. We include examples of software installer menus, electronic business cards, marketing brochures and many others. It’s also easy to make your own project templates or to add in templates made by others.

Improved! Project Explorer
Get an overview of your project in one place. You can see all of the pages, events, dialogs and objects in your project organized into a tree hierarchy. Double-click any item to edit its properties or right-click for common commands. It’s a great way to see how everything is connected. The Project Explorer in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been revamped to give you a better overall view of your project. Things like better icons, collapsible Dialog and Page categories and better visual indications for hidden and locked objects will be much appreciated. Additional context-sensitive right-click menus have been added and reworked to present you with only the most appropriate commands for working with objects, pages, dialogs and events.

Properties Pane
The properties pane is a fast way to view and edit all of the attributes of a page or object. You can interactively edit the object text, font, size, color, tooltip and much more without missing a beat.

Page and Dialog Management
Pages (and dialogs) are the backbone of AutoPlay Media Studio. Consider that you can have up to 1000 of them in each project and you’ll realize the importance of effective page management. Accessing pages is easy in AutoPlay, thanks to the page tabs on the main window. You can also easily change page order, rename or remove pages and more with the click of your mouse.

Drag and Drop File Layout System (Asset Management)
When you want to add or remove whole folders of files, or fine-tune the structure of a CD/DVD/BLURAY project, the File Layout dialog comes in very handy. It’s split into two panes, with your computer’s file system on the top and your project on the bottom. Select the files you want, click “add” and you’re done!

Thumbnail File Browsers
The file browsers in the product support thumbnail view, making it much faster and easier to locate files.

Quick Preview
Click the preview button and try out your project whenever you want. There’s no lengthy compiling process to wait for, so you can test changes as you make them.

Undo/Redo
Full support for undo and redo operations make it quick and easy to try out new ideas.

Align and Arrange
A full suite of alignment tools helps make quick work of your layout tasks. Simply select a group of objects and click the desired alignment button to line up their edges on the top, left, right or bottom. You can also easily distribute objects over a given space, make them all the same size, adjust their “z” order, and more.

Group, Pin, Lock & Hide
Professional design tools like object grouping allow you to move and work with multiple objects at once. The lock and pin tools keep you from accidentally moving an object out of place, while the hide and show feature is great for trying out different designs.

Grid and Ruler
Toggle on the grid for easy object placement – the automatic snapping feature makes it quick to use. The ruler is a helpful precision tool assisting you in pixel level placement of your design elements.

Guidelines
Just like in your favorite image editing software, but now in your favorite multimedia development software! Using guidelines, you can set up margins and placement rules to make sure your design looks perfect.

Customizable Toolbars
All of the toolbars and keyboard shortcuts can be reconfigured and customized to your preference. You’re not restricted by the default set up – you can lay out your favorite features the way you like to work with them.

Built-in Spelling Checker
Make sure that typos don’t creep into your projects. Just about anywhere you can type, you can perform a spell check to ensure error-free text. Dictionaries are available for over a dozen languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Slovenian.

Content Gallery
We’ve included a ton of great content to get you started including background images, photos, abstracts, panels, bars, bullets, buttons, sound effects and even music files. Simply mix and match to put together a great looking project in no time.

Professional Application Development

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is a complete rapid application development tool. Even though it is very easy to learn and use, it has everything you need to write professional software applications!

Easy to Understand Object-Oriented Model
AutoPlay Media Studio applications follow a simple model. Each application is made up of individual screens, called pages. Pages are the “surfaces” that the interface is built on. It also contains a feature similar to pages called dialogs. On these pages and dialogs, you can place objects. The objects let you display text, images, and other media (videos, Flash, HTML) on the page or dialog.

The application, the pages, the dialogs, and the objects can all respond to various events. Events are things that can happen at run time, such as the user clicking on a button object, or a video object reaching the end of the video it’s playing.

You can add actions to these events to make your application respond to them. Actions tell your application to do something specific whenever the event they’re assigned to occurs. For example, you could start playing an audio file when the user clicks on a “Play Music” button, or load and display a text file when the user clicks on a “More Info” button. With hundreds of actions at your disposal, your instructions can be as simple or as complex as you wish.

Event Driven Architecture
Events include things like clicking on an object or moving the mouse across a page. Simply add actions to the appropriate object’s event handler and they’ll be performed automatically. This simple system, while easy to work with, is also incredibly powerful!

NEW! Faster & More Powerful Scripting Engine
AutoPlay Media Studio uses a very powerful, yet very easy to use scripting language called ‘Lua’. It features everything from “for, repeat and while” loops, to “if/else” conditions, functions, variables and associative arrays. Paired with the built-in action library, full mathematical evaluation and Boolean expressions, there is simply nothing you can’t achieve. We’ve also built in an Action Wizard so even complete novices can create powerful projects that handle the most demanding tasks.

Easy to Use Action Wizard
You don’t have to be a wizard to create incredible multimedia applications. We’ve built the wizard into the software! Simply choose the action you want from a categorized list (complete with on-screen interactive help), fill in the requested information fields and the wizard does the rest. You don’t have to know anything about scripting or programming – just fill in the blanks, and you’re done! Making changes is just as easy. Click on the line you want to change and press the “edit” button to go back to the original form. It’s that easy!

Comprehensive Action Library
We’ve included a library of more than 865 powerful yet easy to use actions. There are high-level actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, open documents, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.

NEW! Powerful Lua 5.1 Script Processing
AutoPlay Media Studio 8′s scripting engine is now faster, more powerful and much more extensible. The Lua 5.1 system features a new module system, incremental garbage collection, new mechanism for varargs, new syntax for long strings and comments, mod and length operators, metatables for all types and a fully reentrant parser.

NEW! Customizable Popup Dialogs
Application development has been raised to a new level in AutoPlay Media Studio with the addition of customizable dialogs. Dialogs support the same background settings, objects and events as pages do…but the options don’t stop there. Dialogs have features above and beyond pages including custom sizes, multiple windows styles, and even a custom icon. Complemented by both its own “DialogEx” action category containing 21 new actions, as well as 6 additional “Application” actions, you’ll surely find this powerful new feature a welcome addition to your design arsenal.

Custom Window Shapes
Forget about being restricted to rectangular windows. With the window mask feature, you can create projects of any size and shape you desire. Select from the included masks like “star”, “bubble” and “oval”, or make your own.

Improved! Menu Bars
It’s now possible to add a standard Windows style menu bar to your project. It’s easy to configure and edit, even letting you configure nested items. When a menu item is selected, it fires a project event telling you what was chosen, allowing you to take whatever action you desire. Now the menu bars also take on the look of the operating system or the application skin, for an integrated professional look!

Window Styles
Run your project as a standard window, or go for something more extraordinary like bordered, flat or even kiosk mode. Paired with the window mask option, you don’t even have to make it rectangular. Talk about eye-catching!

Automatic Sizing and Positioning of Objects
The Auto-Resize options for each object allow you to control how each side of the object responds to the page being resized at runtime. This makes it very easy to have resizable applications look right at different sizes.

Custom Icons
Now you can pick your own project icon and have it show up in the window title bar, task bar and as the executable’s icon.

Resource Stamping
Set your own version resource information and have it stored in the executable.

Automatic Code Signing
Automatically have your applications code signed during publishing. This provides a more secure experience for users and helps make applications Windows Vista and Windows 7 compliant.

NEW! Multiple Timer Events
If you want to make things happen on a repeatable schedule, then timers are for you. For example, you can configure a timer to fire every 5 seconds. When it does, you can run an action of your choice like querying a web server, moving an object or playing a sound effect. It’s very powerful and very easy to do. In AutoPlay Media Studio 8, you’re no longer limited to just one timer event per page! You can now set as many “named” timers as you want. Having multiple timers running really opens up the creative possibilities for animations, games, status updates and dozens of other applications.

Page Keyword Searching
Specify a list of keywords associated with each page. Then at runtime use the new actions to search for keywords on pages, create an indexed table of keywords, or even show a common dialog to allow the user to perform keyword searches.

Open Any File, Program or Document
Using the built-in actions your project will be able to open any file with an associated viewer application. Whether it is Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT), Adobe Acrobat (PDF), Microsoft Word (DOC) or any other document or program (EXE), it’s a snap.

Print Pages at Runtime
The addition of the Page.Print action allows you to print pages at runtime including options for whether or not to show a print dialog and whether to scale the pages to fit the paper.

Drag and Drop Visual Interface Objects

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes 21 built-in object types. Objects are the basic building blocks that make your application unique. They are what your user interacts with in order to make your application do something. The great thing about objects in AutoPlay Media Studio, is that they are already ‘smart’. You simply drop them onto a page (or dialog) and then edit their ‘properties’ and ‘events’ to customize them however you want. You’ll be able to layout your graphic user interface as fast as you can drag and drop!

Fancy Interface Objects

This category of objects is the backbone of AutoPlay Media Studio. They let you make graphically-rich software applications. You won’t find this level of customization for interactive interface objects in other development tools without putting in a lot of effort and elbow-grease!

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is a complete visual software-programming environment. Use it to rapidly create full-featured software applications for use on Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Custom Drawn Button Object
A button responds automatically by changing its appearance when you move the mouse over it or click on it. With multiple image states (fully customizable transparent PNG graphics!), text options and a toggle state, buttons are used for many interactive tasks. We include a variety of pre-made button files for you to use, as well as a full featured button editor for making your own. They can be any shape or size you want! Get creative.

Image Object
Display pictures and other graphics in both 256 colors and 16.7 million colors. Supports all the major image file formats, including PNG, JPG, GIF and TIF. Supports interactive resizing, transparency, alpha channel, variable opacity, mouse over and click sounds, tooltip, cursor changes and more. Dynamically reduces and increases image color depth to work on all monitors and display cards.

Text Label Object
Perfect for headlines and single line sentences, text label objects support interactive design-time resizing, custom fonts, sizes, colors, sound effects and more. An advanced anti-alias algorithm eliminates jagged edges and makes all of your text look great – even at large sizes.

Improved! Paragraph Text Object
Use any font, size, color or style of text you want. The software handles the required logic to automatically embed the TrueType fonts you use so your projects look great on any system. Add text effects like bold, italic and underline, set alignment options and pick from a variety of scroll bar skins. The Paragraph object in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 has been updated to default to Windows 7 style scrollbars. This will give any of your scrolling textboxes a much more up-to-date visual appearance. Of course, you can still make your own scrollbar styles from scratch or choose from old favorites such as Chrome, Euro, Corporate, Charcoal, Industrial and more.

Embedded Multimedia Objects

This is a very popular category of objects – and for good reason. You’ll use these objects to show movies, play music, display websites, show documents and more, all from within your application!

Improved! Video Object
Embed digital video into your pages, like AVI, MPEG and WMV. You can make use of the skinable control panel for controlling the video and an extensive action set if you require the video’s playback to be controlled internally. In AutoPlay Media Studio 8, the Video object has been modernized with a variety of new graphic styles. Choose from attractive new blue, green and gray skins. If you don’t find a style you like, it’s super easy to create your own video transport skins using Photoshop or any other graphics editor. We’ve also made the skin format more flexible, removing the constraining height restrictions that may have hampered your creativity in the past.

Improved! Flash Object with External Interface Support
Play Adobe Flash movies right on your page! It’s even possible for your project to interact directly with the flash SWF file, through the use of FSCommands and variables. An extremely popular format for animations, videos, demos and many other tasks. In AutoPlay Media Studio 8, the Adobe Flash object now supports calling and responding to Flash actionscript functions with the addition of the new “Flash.CallFunction” and “Flash.SetReturnValue” actions and new “OnFlashCall” event. Access to Flash’s external API opens up many new uses for the Flash object and advanced interaction with your AutoPlay Media Studio application such as playing FVL video files using a Flash loader.

Slideshow Object
The slideshow object allows you to show a series of images in a set area. It supports automatic resizing and scaling as well as transitions between images.

NEW! PDF Object
AutoPlay Media Studio now features integrated support for displaying Adobe Acrobat PDF documents right in your application. This highly requested feature also gives you full control over the display and formatting. You can show/hide toolbars, scrollbars and borders. Layout options include “Single Page”, “One Column”, “Two Columns” and “User Preference”. View options include “Fit Page”, “Fit Page Width”, “Fit Page Height” and “Actual Size”.

Improved! Web Browser Object
The web browser object lets you display a web site right on your page, just like it would appear in Internet Explorer. Easily create custom web browsers by responding to a comprehensive set of events.The web object now uses the latest Microsoft Internet Explorer SDK. New scrollbar and border options have been added to give you increased visual control over the object – allowing you to better integrate web pages into your AutoPlay Media Studio applications. It’s an extremely powerful feature!

Standard User Interface Controls

The bread and butter of the graphical user interface. You’ll come back to these over and over again. They’re extremely useful for both getting data and displaying data.

Checkbox Object
The checkbox object wraps the standard Windows checkbox control but takes it to a new level by allowing transparent background and mouse state text color changes.

Radio Button Object
The radio button object is great for quiz and test applications. Radio buttons support transparent backgrounds and changing text color as the mouse passes over them. Radio button selection and grouping is also handled automatically.

Input Object
Create forms and other information collection systems. Supports single and multi-line input boxes, as well as password masking, custom input masks and a variety of customization options.

Combo Box Object
When you want to present a list of options, but need to do it in a compact and efficient manner, this object shows a dropdown list box. You can control the look and feel of the object with properties such as font face, text color, size and background color.

List Box Object
Show a scrollable list of information, allowing single or multi-selections. For example, you could display a list of song titles (so the user could choose a song to play), or a list of topics (so the user could decide what topic to view next). Includes options for text style, colors, auto-sorting and more.

Extended User Interface Controls

The ‘not-so-common’ user interface controls that really add enhanced functionality to your application. In other software development tools, you’d have to work pretty hard to get this level of usability into your software. With AutoPlay Media Studio, you just drop them onto your page or dialog!

Tree Object
The tree object allows you to display a hierarchal list of items on the page in the well known tree format. Items can have checkboxes associated with them, or simply be selectable. The tree object has an extensive action set so you can load and manipulate tree items at run time for full flexibility.

Improved! Progress Bar Object
Whether you need to show a percentage of a completed task, or a simple indicator gauge to keep your users informed, the progress bar is ideal. You can control the background and bar colors, text, fonts, vertical or horizontal orientation, step size, min and max values, and a variety of styles such as standard or XP look. Now also takes on the look of the operating system or the application skin in v8!

Rich Text Object
The rich text object allows you to display rich text (.rtf) in an object. It supports background transparency as well as design-time and runtime character and paragraph formatting.

Hotspot Object
Make any part of your background image “live”. The hotspot objects add flexibility to your projects by making background design elements interactive.

More Objects! Add Object Plugins and Go!

Easily expand and extend AutoPlay Media Studio…

NEW! Plugin SDK v2
Object Plugins are one of the best features of AutoPlay Media Studio. They allow 3rd party software developers to extend and expand the product in an extremely integrated and seamless fashion. By simply dropping a plugin into your project, you can easily save yourself hours of work and add significant functionality to your application. The great news is that with AutoPlay Media Studio 8, plugin developers can now fully leverage the advantages of the Lua 5.1 language. The Plugin SDK v2 is available for free download on the indigorose.com website in the forums.

Powerful Programming Language

AutoPlay Media Studio isn’t just a pretty face! Sure, you can make some drop-dead gorgeous interfaces for your application – and the drag-and-drop objects are super easy to use. However, when you want to really get down to business, AutoPlay Media Studio’s scripting engine is going to knock your socks off!

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes more than 865 high level actions with everything from XML parsing and database queries to web server script interaction, file transfers and much more. Plus, it’s easy to expand the language with drop-in Action plugins and Lua modules. Additionaly, the professional script editor features color syntax highlighting, code completion, function highlighting, as-you-type action prototypes, Ctrl+Space function listings, and even context-sensitive help.

Fast & Powerful Scripting Language
AutoPlay Media Studio uses a very powerful, yet very easy to use scripting language called ‘Lua’. It features everything from “for, repeat and while” loops, to “if/else” conditions, functions, variables and associative arrays. Paired with the built-in action library, full mathematical evaluation and Boolean expressions, there is simply nothing you can’t achieve. We’ve also built in an Action Wizard so even complete novices can create powerful projects that handle the most demanding tasks.

Comprehensive Function Library (We Call Them ‘Actions’)
We’ve included a library of more than 865 powerful yet easy to use actions. There are high-level actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, open documents, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.

NEW! Action Plugins (SDK v2 Format!)
Action Plugins are one of the best features of AutoPlay Media Studio. They allow 3rd party software developers to extend and expand the product in an extremely integrated and seamless fashion. By simply dropping a plugin into your project, you can easily save yourself hours of work and add significant functionality to your application. The great news is that with AutoPlay Media Studio 8, plugin developers can now fully leverage the advantages of the Lua 5.1 language. The Plugin SDK v2 is available for free download on the indigorose.com website.

Expandable with Action Plugins
Add on modules can extend your projects in infinitely powerful ways, such as adding support for databases, FTP file transfers and CD audio playback. Tight integration with the design environment makes plugins just as easy to use as built-in actions. Plugins are available through Indigo Rose as well as third-party developers thanks to Indigo Rose’s freely available plug-in development kit.

NEW! Expandable with Lua 5.1 Code Modules
With the new scripting engine upgrade comes compatibility with Lua 5.1 modules. You now have access to a wealth of free Lua code you can download and use in your AutoPlay Media Studio 8 projects. In most cases you simply copy the module files into your project and “require” them in your script. Just some of the useful modules out there include Bit Operation, Date, Canvas Draw, Imaging Tool, GD, Crypto, Colors, Speech, Alien, Social (Twitter), CURL, Regular Expression Parsing and so much more. It’s a whole treasure chest of addons and tools just waiting for you!

A Sampling of Actions

There are over 865 actions included with AutoPlay Media Studio. We welcome you to view them in the AutoPlay Media Studio User’s Guide and Command Reference. Here is a small selection of interesting actions…

Impressive Multimedia Handling

AutoPlay Media Studio excels at combining diverse media types into a single application. There are objects like QuickTime, Flash, Slideshow and Video among them. Even the audio handling features alone can save you weeks of work. For example, creating voiceovers on top of background music tracks are a snap. In fact, you can play up to eight channels of audio simultaneously with automatic selection of either hardware or software mixing.

Multi-Channel Audio Mixing
Your projects can take advantage of the fastest, most advanced sound effect and music handling engine available anywhere! You can play up to 8 channels of audio simultaneously with automatic selection of either hardware or software mixing. Most incredibly, it does not require any version of DirectSound or DirectX to be installed, using them only if available.

Background Music
Add a bunch of music files to the play list, and they’ll play in the background while your project runs. All of the music is automatically mixed in real-time with mouse-over sound effects and up to 6 other channels, such as audio narration.

Advanced Graphics Handling with Image Transparency, Shadows and Blending
No competitive tool can match AutoPlay Media Studio when it comes to fast and efficient handling of complex graphics files. With our support for 32-bit PNG images, you gain access to incredible shadow effects, blending options, opacity levels and full alpha channel information. In simple terms, it means that your projects will look better than ever!

Startup Video or Flash Movie
Start your project up with an introductory video or flash animation. It can run full screen and makes an eye catching start to your project. Of course, there are a variety of options for customization including size and background color.

Slideshow Object
The slideshow object allows you to show a series of images in a set area. It supports automatic resizing and scaling as well as transitions between images.

Easy Software Deployment Options

Once you’ve got your project ready to go, AutoPlay Media Studio’s Publishing Wizard will package it up and make it ready to distribute. There are a variety of powerful options to choose from, including direct CD/DVD/BLU-RAY burning, single-file executable, ISO image or hard drive folder.

Integrated CD/DVD/BLU-RAY Burning
In addition to CD-R/CD-RW or DVD±R/DVD±RW media, with AutoPlay Media Studio 8 you can now also publish directly to Blu-ray media, including BD-R (SL), BD-R (DL), BD-RE (SL) and BD-RE (DL). Simply insert a blank disc and the wizard will burn your finished project right to it.

Web/Email Executable
Turn you finished project into a compressed, single-file executable. It’s perfect for distribution by web and email. The best thing about AutoPlay Media Studio’s single-file executable is that it is totally self-contained. No complicated installation process required. Just run it!

Hard Drive Folder
Rather do the CD/DVD burning yourself? No problem. You can easily output your project to a folder on your hard drive that’s ready to package up however you want. It’s a great choice if you are creating a traditional application and want to distribute your application with a professional software installer tool, like Setup Factory.

ISO Image
An advanced option, for people wanting to produce an ISO image for use by a CD/DVD replication company or service bureau.

More Information:

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Product Brochure AutoPlay Media Studio excels at making multimedia applications by bringing...
What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...

Frequently Asked Questions for AutoPlay Media Studio

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:00:17 +0000

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is an easy-to-use software development tool that allows you to create your own custom software applications using a visual drag and drop workspace. You can make everything from CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BLURAY autorun menus and interactive presentations to complete multimedia software programs – all in less time than you expect! You can simply drag and drop your way to amazing software applications…

Here are some answers to common questions about AutoPlay Media Studio…

Who Needs AutoPlay Media Studio?

Anyone who wants to create their own software needs AutoPlay Media Studio. Whether you are creating an autorun menu for a software CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BLU-RAY disc, distributing document files, PowerPoint presentations, Acrobat PDF files or making full multimedia applications, AutoPlay Media Studio is the tool for you.

What can I do with AutoPlay Media Studio?

Quite simply, AutoPlay Media Studio helps you make professional software applications. While the product excels at certain tasks like making graphically rich multimedia software applications and front-end browsers for CD/DVD/BLURAY-ROMs (i.e. Autorun/AutoPlay menus), that’s just the beginning. Integrating diverse media types such as images, sounds, videos, text, and flash into a single professional application is what AutoPlay Media Studio does best. In fact, it’s been trusted to deliver rock-solid multimedia experiences to millions of people around the world. Examples include:

Multimedia Authoring & Application Development
Computer Based Training (CBT) Applications
CD-ROM AutoPlay/Autorun Menu Systems
Interactive Marketing Presentations
CD Business Cards
Much more!

How easy is it to learn?

AutoPlay Media Studio has always been known for its easy-to-use visual design environment. It’s super easy to add interactive objects (images, video, text etc.) to your project and move them into position with the help of alignment tools, guidelines, and grids. Once you’ve completed your interface, it’s a snap to attach powerful actions to events such as mouse clicks and key presses. Whether opening a PDF file, playing a video, or showing a web site, the Action wizard makes it easy to choose from over 865 built-in functions. It’s just as powerful as Visual Basic, Delphi, Java or C++, but it’s much easier to learn and faster to get results.

Does AutoPlay Media Studio have a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface?

Yes. AutoPlay Media Studio boasts an intuitive drag-and-drop WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. Adding images, videos, and other content is as easy as clicking a button. Or, simply drag your media into the Design Environment from Windows Explorer. Moving and re-arranging items in your project is just as easy; just drag them around the page! What you see when you are designing your project is what your users will see when they run your project. Adding and working with content has never been easier!

Can I make Autorun menus, business card CD’s and video browser projects with AutoPlay Media Studio?

Absolutely! While AutoPlay Media Studio was originally designed to create front-end autorun menus for CD/DVD-ROM’s, but the new features in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 make it the perfect tool for any multimedia task you can throw at it. Create stunning CD business cards, dazzling video projects, or anything else that you can dream up!

Can AutoPlay Media Studio Burn to DVD and Blu-Ray discs?

Yes! AutoPlay Media Studio 8 can now burn Blu-Ray and DVD media right from the design environment. Simply select ‘CD/DVD/BLURAY’ as your publish method, insert a blank disc and AutoPlay Media Studio takes care of the rest. DVD’s burnt through AutoPlay Media Studio will play in any Windows computer that can read DVD+/-R format discs. Blu-Ray discs obviously require a bluray drive…

Does AutoPlay Media Studio support Adobe Flash?

Yes! AutoPlay Media Studio comes standard with a Flash object, enabling you to seamlessly integrate your Flash files into your AutoPlay Media Studio projects.

What video formats does AutoPlay Media Studio support?

AutoPlay Media Studio’s video objects supports a wide variety of video formats including Windows Media Video (WMV), AVI, and MPEG. In addition, with the new QuickTime object, AutoPlay Media Studio 8 can display any video format supported by Apple’s QuickTime plugin.

What image formats does AutoPlay Media Studio support?

AutoPlay Media Studio supports all major graphics file formats, including BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, PSD, and TIF.

What audio formats does AutoPlay Media Studio support?

AutoPlay Media Studio supports a variety of audio formats including OGG and WAV. MP3 files can be played through the Windows Media Player plugin. In v8, the QuickTime object can also be used for playback of dozens of additional audio formats.

What operating systems do AutoPlay Media Studio projects run on?

Applications created with AutoPlay Media Studio 8 will run on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and above. Please consult the help file for a complete list of system requirements.

Can I use AutoPlay Media Studio with Macs?

Unfortunately, AutoPlay Media Studio is designed for use with Windows only. It currently does not support other operating systems such as Mac. That being said, AutoPlay Media Studio 8 does support a variety of cross-platform technologies, such as universal video formats, Flash and QuickTime.

Do I need to be a programmer to use AutoPlay Media Studio?

Absolutely not! With its intuitive drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface and easy-to-use action wizard, both programmers and non-programmers alike can create professional, fully functional applications in a matter of minutes. Beginners will appreciate the quick results while power users love the flexibility of the software.

Can I create web pages with AutoPlay Media Studio?

No. AutoPlay Media Studio is designed to create interactive software applications. It is not able to generate web pages. With that being said, you can publish to a self-contained executable which can be hosted on a website for your users to download. You can even host web pages within your application, thanks to the included Web object.

Are there any templates to work from?

Yes! AutoPlay Media Studio ships with a number of professional templates to choose from. As well, both Indigo Rose staff members and users alike post sample projects from time to time on the Indigo Rose forums and at www.autoplaymediastudio.com.

How long does it take to create a project?

Simple yet fully functional applications can be created in a matter of minutes! It really depends on what you are trying to create. Suffice to say, you can create impressive multimedia software projects faster and easier with AutoPlay Media Studio, than you could with any traditional software development tool, like Visual C++, Delphi or Visual Basic.

Do any large companies use AutoPlay Media Studio?

AutoPlay Media Studio is used by thousand of companies, both large and small alike. Large companies love our royalty-free licensing policy, while small companies and individual users enjoy the multitude of features for an affordable price.

Do I have to pay any royalties to distribute application created with AutoPlay Media Studio?

Absolutely not! AutoPlay Media Studio’s license agreement lets you distribute published applications on a royalty-free basis. In other words, once you purchase the commercial version of AutoPlay Media Studio, there are no additional costs to distribute your applications. Please note that this does not apply to ‘AutoPlay Media Studio Personal Edition‘. It is designed for personal, non-commercial use only.

Is AutoPlay Media Studio only for creating AutoPlay / Autorun menus?

No! AutoPlay Media Studio is a powerful multimedia design tool that can be used to design just about any software application you can dream up. Our users have used AutoPlay Media Studio to create everything from computer-based training applications to video games. No matter what your multimedia task, AutoPlay Media Studio is up to the challenge.

Can I distribute my projects by email?

AutoPlay Media Studio can publish to a self-extracting executable file, which is perfect for internet distribution. While it is possible to attach this file to an email message, due to many modern spam filters blocking executable attachments, your best bet is to post the generated file to a web server and email your clients a link that they can use to download your application.

What type of files can I use within my AutoPlay Media Studio project?

Any file that can be read from Windows can be opened using AutoPlay Media Studio. Some files, such as images, PDF (new in v8!) and videos, can be displayed within your AutoPlay Media Studio application through objects. All other files, (such as PPT, DOC, XLS) can be opened in their default system viewers.

Can AutoPlay Media Studio react to mouse clicks and mouse movement?

Absolutely! AutoPlay Media Studio can detect mouse movement, and both left and right mouse-clicks. With this powerful interactivity AutoPlay Media Studio can perform tasks when objects are clicked and display pop-up menus when the user right-clicks within your project. You can even perform tasks each time the user moves the mouse! Thanks to the flexibility and high level of interactivity, the possibilities are limitless.

Can AutoPlay Media Studio read and write registry values and XML files?

Yes! AutoPlay Media Studio comes standard with easy-to-use actions for reading from and writing to the user’s registry as well as reading from and writing to XML files. As well, there are actions to determine if the user has the appropriate permissions to read from and/or write to the registry etc.

What objects are included in AutoPlay Media Studio 8?

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes a huge collection of objects including: Custom Drawn Button Object, Image Object, Text Label Object, Paragraph Text Object, Video Object, QuickTime Object, Flash Object, Slideshow Object, PDF Object, Web Browser Object, xButton Object, Checkbox Object, Radio Button Object, Input Object, Combo Box Object, List Box Object, Checkbox List Object, Tree Object, Grid Object, Progress Bar Object, Rich Text Object and Hotspot Object.

In addition to the built-in objects, AutoPlay Media Studio can be expanded through object plugins. Some of the plugins available allow you to include a calendar, a slider and image thumbnails in your project.

Can I add my own information to the file properties of the published executable?

Yes! The commercial version of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 allows you to customize the information displayed in the file properties of your published application’s executable.

Can I change the icon of the published executable?

Yes! The commercial version of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 allows you to customize the icon displayed both in your application, as well as the icon associated with the executable of your published application.

Can I change the properties of objects at runtime?

Yes! Objects in AutoPlay Media Studio 8 have corresponding easy-to-use actions allowing you to retrieve the existing object properties, and set new properties at runtime. As well, you can create and destroy objects at runtime through actions.

Is there a free version of AutoPlay Media Studio 8?

Yes, there is! It’s called AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Personal Edition. And no, we haven’t lost our minds. In fact, we think it makes perfect sense. So, “why,” you ask, would we just give away AutoPlay Media Studio – our best-selling software development tool? The answer is simple. We want to change the world… Now before you go crazy, let me tell you up front that it’s not for everyone. There are a few ‘catches’…

AutoPlay Media Studio Personal Edition is only free if you’re using it for personal, non-commercial use. If you’re using it to make money, you’ll have to pony up the license fee for the ‘professional’ edition (fortunately, that’s also a steal at $295).
Technical support is only available through the community forums. In order to get personal technical support, you need to purchase AutoPlay Media Studio Professional Edition.

Who can use AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Personal Edition?

AutoPlay Media Studio Personal Edition is provided FREE for personal, non-commercial use only. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to create applications that are distributed as freeware, public domain or open-source. It’s also ideal for students and home users who want to learn professional programming techniques using an easy-to-learn RAD (rapid application development) software development system.

If you are part of a company, organization, business entity or unit of government, you can not use the “Personal Edition”. Instead, you should purchase a license for AutoPlay Media Studio Professional Edition. Likewise, if you are an individual who has progressed from prototype to finished project and you now want to distribute your applications for profit or commercial gain, you’ll need to purchase a Pro license.

What is the difference between the ‘Pro’ Edition and the Personal Edition?

The software is exactly the same, whether you are using the ‘personal edition’ or the ‘professional edition’. Same features. Same objects. Same scripting actions. Same. Same. Same. But… (heh), if you build with the ‘personal edition’, we’re going to display a small logo splash image when your application shuts down. It says ‘Powered by AutoPlay Media Studio Personal Edition’. That’s it. Two and a half seconds of promo, so other aspiring software developers might look us up, just like you did.

Where can I get AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Personal Edition

You can download AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Personal Edition from http://www.autoplay.org.

More Information:

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...

Download a Free Trial Version of AutoPlay Media Studio 8

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:56 +0000

The best way to decide if AutoPlay Media Studio 8 is right for you, is to download the free 30-day trial version. The trial version is fully functional, so you’ll be able to really “kick the tires” and see what it can do.

To download the free trial version, please enter your information into the fields below. We’ll email you the download instructions within minutes of submitting your request.

Note: By submitting this form, you agree to receive followup emails regarding AutoPlay Media Studio. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time. We do not sell, rent or give away your email address to anyone. We only use it to keep you informed about AutoPlay Media Studio and how to get the most out of your free trial.

More Information:

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 User’s Guide

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:55 +0000

The easiest way to learn how to use AutoPlay Media Studio is to start it up and use it. You’ll find that is both intuitive and easy to use. If you have any questions about what a particular dialog box option does, just click on the Help button to get a full description.

However, if you enjoy learning everything there is to know about your software, the Help menu is your friend. That’s were you’ll find links to both the User’s Guide and the full Help File/Command Reference.

We’ve also made these resource available to you online in “webhelp” format, if you’d like to take a peek before installing the software.

More Information:

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Screenshot Gallery

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:16 +0000

AutoPlay Media Studio 8’s visual approach to rapid software development makes it easy for anyone to create their own applications – even if you have absolutely no programming experience. It’s the perfect tool for creating CD/DVD autorun menus – but that’s just the beginning. It’s also being used by thousands of developers to create interactive presentations, video training software, web tools, database apps and much more.

Click on any of the screenshot images below to see a larger, more detailed version.

AutoPlay Media Studio 8′s Drag and Drop Development

Building professional software couldn’t be easier! Our award-winning WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) visual design environment makes multimedia software development easy and fun. Simply drag and drop your media content onto one or more pages and then add interactivity with over 865 built-in actions.

Transparency, Shadows and Blending

Support for 32-bit PNG images, gives you access to incredible shadow effects, blending options, opacity levels and full alpha channel information.

Layout Tools

Just like in your favorite image editing software, AutoPlay Media Studio contains all of the popular layout tools such as object alignment, page grids, and guidelines.

Custom Window Shapes

Forget about being restricted to rectangular windows. With the window mask feature, you can create applications of any size and shape you desire. Select from the included masks like “star,” “bubble” and “oval,” or make your own.

Interactive Objects

There are nearly two dozen different object types to choose from. Object types include: Button, Image, Label, Paragraph, Video, QuickTime, Flash, SlideShow, PDF, Web, xButton, CheckBox, RadioButton, Input, ComboBox, ListBox, Tree, Grid, Progress, Rich Text, Hotsopt, and various plugins. Each object includes a variety of events and is fully customizable.

Quick Actions

You don’t need to be a programmer to use AutoPlay Media Studio. It’s easy enough for anyone to use. While a full wizard-assisted scripting engine is available for power users, the Quick Action tab lets new users get up to speed right away. Just fill in the blanks to handle the most popular actions like opening documents, running programs, switching pages and more. It’s that easy!

Scripting

For advanced users, AutoPlay Media Studio 8 includes the same scripting engine as other Indigo Rose products. Based on the popular “Lua” language, this incredibly powerful free-form scripting engine features everything from ‘for, repeat and while’ loops, to ‘if/else’ conditions, functions, variables and associative arrays. AutoPlay’s event-driven, object-oriented architecture makes it easy to create interactive multimedia applications.

Action Wizard

The built-in action wizard makes the scripting engine accessible to everyone. Simply choose the action you want from a categorized list (complete with on-screen interactive help), fill in the requested information fields and the wizard does the rest. We’ve included a library of more than 865 powerful yet easy to use actions. There are high-level actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, open documents, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.

Properties Inspector

The properties inspector is a fast way to view and edit all of the attributes of a page or object. You can interactively edit the object text, font, size, color, tooltip and much more without missing a beat.

Project Explorer

Get an overview of your project in one place. You can see all of the pages, events and objects in your project organized into a tree hierarchy. Double-click any item to edit its properties or right-click for common commands. It’s a great way to see how everything is connected.

Page Management

Pages are the backbone of AutoPlay Media Studio. Consider that you can have up to 1000 of them in each project and you’ll realize the importance of effective page management. Accessing pages is easy thanks to the page tabs on the main window. You can also easily change page order, rename or remove pages and more with the click of your mouse.

Window Styles

Run your project as a standard window, or go for something more extraordinary like bordered, flat, or kiosk mode. With support for window masks, you don’t even have to make it rectangular. Talk about cool!

Advanced Multi-Channel Audio

Take advantage of the fastest, most advanced sound effect and music handling engine available anywhere. Add music files to the play list, and they’ll play in the background while your project runs. All of the music is automatically mixed in real time with mouse-over sound effects. In fact, you can play up to 8 channels of audio simultaneously with automatic selection of hardware or software mixing. Incredibly, it does not require any version of DirectSound or DirectX to be installed, using them only if available.

Menu Bars

Add a standard Windows-style menu bar to your project. It’s easy to configure and edit, even letting you configure nested items. When a menu item is selected, it fires a project event telling you what was chosen, allowing you to take whatever action you desire.

Advanced Objects

AutoPlay Media Studio has many sophisticated objects built right in, such as the Tree object which makes setting up an interactive hierarchical tree view a snap.

Startup Video or Flash Movie

Start your project up with an introductory video or flash animation. It can run full screen or windowed and makes an eye-catching start to your project. Of course, there are a variety of option settings including size and background color.

Dependency Checking

Automatically check the user’s system for required technologies with the built-in dependencies system. The dependency checking system is completely open and scripted, so you can modify the behaviour or even add your own technologies to the list.

Easy Autorun Publishing

AutoPlay Media Studio makes building and distributing your finished project a snap. Whether you’d like to create a single-file executable for web download, or burn it to a CD/DVD data disc, it just takes a few clicks. You can even choose to publish to an ISO disc image, or build straight to a hard drive folder for packing up into a setup.exe with your favorite installer tool, like Setup Factory.

More Information:

What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...
AutoPlay Media Studio Awards ...

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Product Brochure

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:00:16 +0000

AutoPlay Media Studio excels at making multimedia applications by bringing together different types of media and presenting them in an attractive, customized way that is fully interactive. Impressive multimedia projects can be created faster and easier with AutoPlay Media Studio than with any traditional software development tool (such as Visual C++, Delphi, or Visual Basic). In fact, fully functional applications can be created in a matter of minutes. Whether you’re a complete novice or a seasoned programmer, you’re going to love AutoPlay Media Studio’s visual approach to software development.

Click here to download a printable AutoPlay Media Studio 7.5 brochure

*** Version 8 Brochure Coming Soon! ***

Note: This brochure in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You may need to download and install the Adobe Reader software in order to view it.

More Information:

AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Product Features AutoPlay Media Studio 8 makes it easy to create your...
What’s New in AutoPlay Media Studio 8? You’re going to love what we’ve done in AutoPlay Media...
Overview of AutoPlay Media Studio 8 Are you looking for a faster, easier way to create...

Using a Binary Patch Maker to Create Secure Software Patches

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:50:24 +0000

Once a software product has been released into the field, it’s inevitable that software development companies will want to fix problems, add features, solve unforeseen compatibility issues, and fix security holes. That’s why a binary patch maker belongs in the software development tool kit of every programmer.

Benefits of Patching

The role of patches in the software deployment life-cycle is to get already installed software up to date after it becomes outdated. Patching technology offers numerous benefits over simply redistributing new versions of the original software in whole form.

Smaller file size

Because they only contain the data that has changed from one version to another, patches can be much smaller than a full software installer needs to be. Especially in situations where large data files are involved, the savings are often dramatic-patches that are less than 1% of the original file sizes are possible.

Reduced bandwidth

Smaller file sizes translate into reduced bandwidth costs, and reducing the amount of traffic leaves more bandwidth for other services.

Faster transmission speeds

Having less data to transmit means that updates can be sent and received faster, which means less time is spent waiting for updates.

Security

The best way to protect information during transmission is to never transmit it in the first place. By only transmitting the data that has changed, patches reduce the risk of third-party interception. Even if some hypothetical future technology made it possible to “crack” the encryption methods used to package the changes, the unchanged data would remain safe.

Integrity

A patch can’t update something that isn’t there. If a user doesn’t already have your software installed, they won’t be able to apply the patch. And if someone is using a modified version of a file, that file won’t be updated-unless you expressly permit it when you design your patch.

Patching Methods

There are two basic methods that can be used to update a file: binary patching, and whole-file patching.

Binary Patching

Binary patching or “delta compression” involves analyzing two versions of a file in order to extract only the data that has changed. The same changes can then be applied to any file that matches the old version, in order to “transform” it into the new version.

Creating a binary patch involves performing a byte-by-byte comparison between the original file and the new file, and then encoding the differences into a difference file. Each difference file contains the actual bytes that are different in the new file, along with a number of instructions that describe which bytes need to change, and which bytes are the same. This information is said to be encoded into the difference file.

Tip: The term “difference file” is often shortened to “diff file” or just “diff.”

When the patch is applied, the difference file is decoded, and the instructions are used to build the new file by copying the “unchanged” data out of the old file, along with the “changed” data that was encoded into the difference file.

For example, given an old file “A” and a new file “B,” a binary patching engine would compare A to B and then produce a difference file; let’s call it “AB.diff.” Once the difference file is created, you can use it to create the B file from any file that matches the A file. In fact, the binary patching engine could recreate B using A and AB.diff.

Because binary patching only stores the parts that have changed, the difference files can be very small-often less than one percent of the new file’s size. The size of the difference file depends entirely on how much data has changed between the two versions.

Each difference file can update a single, specific version of a file to another single, specific version of that file. The encoded instructions in the difference file are only valid for a file that is a perfect match of the original source file. Note that binary patching cannot be used to update a file if it has been modified in any way.

For patches that need to update multiple files, the patch executable will need to contain a separate difference file for each file that needs to be updated. So, for example, to update a single file from version 1.0 or 1.1 to version 1.2, using a single patch executable, it would need to contain one difference file to go from 1.0 to 1.2, and another to go from 1.1 to 1.2.

In most cases, the difference files are so small that you can fit a lot of versions into a single patch executable and still use less space than you would by just including the whole file, as in whole-file patching (see below).

Note: An advanced patch maker like Indigo Rose’s Visual Patch will automatically switch from binary to whole-file patching on a file-by-file basis whenever the total size of all the difference files surpasses the size of the whole file.

Whole-File Patching

Whole-file patching operates on a different principle. Instead of only containing the parts that have changed (as binary patches do), whole-file patches just copy the entire file. The “patch” is just a copy of the new version.

Whole-file patches can be faster to apply, because they don’t have to search through the original file in order to copy the parts that haven’t changed to the new version. They just overwrite the old file with the new one. The downside, of course, is that whole-file patches tend to be much larger than binary patches.

There are, however, two situations where whole-file patches can actually be smaller: when creating a single patch file that is able to update many different versions, and when the files being patched are too dissimilar.

A smart patch maker like Visual Patch chooses the patching method that produces the best results. It automatically switches between binary patching and whole-file patching on a file-by-file basis in order to produces the smallest patch possible for your project.

About the Author

For more information on choosing a binary patch maker that creates compact and secure software updates, visit http://www.indigorose.com/products/visual-patch/ and download a free trial version of Visual Patch.

More Information:

Software Developers: Add a “Check for Update” Feature to Your Software Applications Today’s rapid product cycles, security vulnerabilities and short turnaround times...
Choosing an AutoPlay Multimedia Software Development Tool Getting started developing multimedia software applications can seem intimidating at...
Build a Bullet-Proof Windows Software Installer: 4 Critical Steps You Can’t Overlook So, you’ve created a great new software application for the...

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