Active Movie - restore/ reinstall / how to use (again) ? ?

[Carl Grossman]

    As a guitar player, I sometimes need to watch a certain passage repeatedly.

    Windows Media Player does not seem to offer the otion to loop between specific parts of a video. If I am wrong, please tell me how this can be done.

    Active Movie is what I used before having to reformat and reinstall Windows 2000 Professional. Now, I cant' figure out how to get it back. I SAVED my original install file (so I thought) and, indeed, when I ran it, it SAID it was sucessfully installed. But when I tried to "open with" I was unable to find Active Movie in the Apps list.

    In the past, I had figured out a way in folder option to add another catagory, and enter a command string that included Run32DLL and a % sign and other parameters. I thought I had saved this but can not find it any more.

    Here is some more information about my problem
    1 - This is a Microsoft product - perhaps a forerunner of Media player. It is more compact, less intrusive,
    2 - After the message confiming "sucessfull setup" it does not appear in control panel /add remove, nor, as I said, is it an option under "open with" Yet it must have installed . . . somewhere . . right? After all, that's what the message said. WHERE ? (and how the hell do I USE it?)

I hope someone can come to my aid here,

[AnnMarie]

Hi Carl - welcome to CTH. Microsoft ActiveMovie has been changed to DirectShow and DirectShow is included in DirectX Media RunTime. It is available from Microsoft Download Centre here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en)

[Carl Grossman]

     AnnMarie, your seemingly on-the-money response may have served only to confuse me yet further. However, in the explanation of that confusion may lie a solution: The site you so kindly directed me to suggested I download DirectX 8.1b Runtime for Windows 2000.

    I have a sneaking suspicion I've already got something close enough for gummint work that could serve as the launching pad for a solution - DirectX 8.1 (vers. 4.08.01.0881, according to dxdiag).

    In fact, I had this version of DirectX last month when I still had this now-missing functionality of Microsoft ActiveMovie. So, perhaps knowing this will help direct me to regain this recently lost capability.

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Further information – in case it jogs your (or another’s) memory follows:
    Here is how I was able to use it in my previous versions of Windows 2K

    1 - (last month) "open with" and browse to a list of applications, one of which may have been Active Movie or Run32-something-or-other – I’m not sure – whatever it was, it worked.
    2 – (Last year- with Directx 8.0 - not 8.1- I think) :
       a-Went to folder options and modified every relevant file type (avi, mpg, etc).
       b-For each file type, under the “advanced” tab, I'd add a "new action" which I arbitrarily called "ActM."
       c-In the “application used to perform this action” I pasted the text string from the Active Movie folder option command string (which, unlike now, used to have an entry in folder options.) . I don’t remember the syntax exactly, but it included: C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\RUNDLL32.EXE, a percent sign (%) sign and a few other parameters I didn’t quite understand.
       d-After that, right clicking on any file with an extension I’d modified would give me that other option and – voila – Active Movie. (It isn’t the “active movie” part that is critical here – simply the ability to open several instances of a file with different start-stop points).

    One note of further concern (and perhaps a clue): I just checked my system now, there is nothing called "Run32 . . . ANYthing." Perhaps THEREIN lies my problem.

    In any case, to cover old ground (and elaborate thereupon), Just like my previous Win 2K installations, when I clicked on the “install” file I saved – and which USED to “work” on my Win 2K system I can “see” it going through checking "check system," then "install files," and finally "update registry" before saying it has successfully installed. So - again . . . .WHERE was it installed? It’s not on control panel add/remove.

[AnnMarie]

Hi again Carl - I'm not going to be much help I'm afraid. If you have run a search on your PC for Active Movie (or ActiveMovie) and come up with blanks, the only thought that I can offer is perhaps the files were overwritten when you downloaded DirectX 8.1. Have you tried DirectShow to see if it will do the job for you? More information regarding DirectShow here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dx8_c/directx_cpp/htm/directshow.asp)

[Carl Grossman]

Thank you again. Perhaps Direct Show will work. I was, however, unable to find on the site you directed me to, a place from which to actually DOWNLOAD it. It was mostly instructions how to use it or write for it.
Any suggestions?

Thanks