# RubyOSA for QuickTime **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 3, 2007, 11:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480 "2007-07-03T23:35:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 11:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/1 "2007-07-03T23:35:36Z")
How do I access the properties of a QuickTime movie? I’m trying RubyOSA, but am open to other ideas. I ultimately want to save the middle frame of movies I download from my digital camera. That jpg will be a placeholder in Aperture. Here’s what I think are the essentials at this point require ‘rbosa’ require ‘fileutils’ include FileUtils appQT = OSA.app(‘QuickTime Player’) src = “/Volumes/photos/” filesCount = 0 frameFilesCount = 0 Find.find(src) do |fn| if File.file?(fn) if [’.mov’,’.avi’].include?(File.extname(fn).downcase) appQT.open(fn) # works frameCount = appQT.duration(“movie 1”) \>\> undefined method ‘duration’ for #OSA::QuickTimePlayer::Application:0x1065c24 puts “frameCount: #{frameCount}” appQT.close(fn) # doesn’t work end end end puts I looked at the output of appQT.methods and none of the items listed that made sense to me worked. This newbie needs some help groking RubyOSA, Ruby, and QuickTime. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 11:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/2 "2007-07-03T23:58:45Z")
Hi, On 7/3/07, 12 34 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > How do I access the properties of a QuickTime movie? I’m trying RubyOSA, > but am open to other ideas. Why not trying to access the QTKit framework from Ruby via RubyCocoa? Here is an example that prints all the metadata properties of a given movie. $ cat a.rb require ‘osx/foundation’ OSX.require\_framework ‘QTKit’ puts OSX::QTMovie.movieWithFile\_error(ARGV[0], nil).movieAttributes HTH, Laurent ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 2:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/3 "2007-07-04T02:19:44Z")
Laurent S. wrote: > Hi, > > On 7/3/07, 12 34 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > How do I access the properties of a QuickTime movie? I’m trying RubyOSA, > > but am open to other ideas. > > Why not trying to access the QTKit framework from Ruby via RubyCocoa? Didn’t know I could, and even if I had I didn’t know what do to with it. I thought RubyCocoa went to the other way. That is, to use Ruby in XCode. But obviously it’s more than that. > Here is an example that prints all the metadata properties of a given > movie. > > $ cat a.rb > require ‘osx/foundation’ > OSX.require\_framework ‘QTKit’ > puts OSX::QTMovie.movieWithFile\_error(ARGV[0], nil).movieAttributes > > HTH, > Laurent Either I’ve already installed RubyCocoa or I can’t. Neither machine will allow the pkg installer to work. And I tried by hand recently on my iMac desktop, and I got an error at some point. So unless I figure out how to get around that I’m up a creek. Also what is cat a.rb. I don’t find cat in Ruby, and man cat, tell me it’s concatenate and pring; but that doesn’t make sense to me in this context. Much to learn. Thanks for any other further suggestions. ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 12:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/4 "2007-07-04T12:17:46Z")
On 7/4/07, 12 34 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I thought RubyCocoa went to the other way. That is, to use Ruby in > XCode. But obviously it’s more than that. Yes, it’s a real bridge between the Objective-C and the Ruby runtimes. > Either I’ve already installed RubyCocoa or I can’t. Neither machine will > allow the pkg installer to work. And I tried by hand recently on my iMac > desktop, and I got an error at some point. Ah, maybe you are running 10.4.10. The latest release won’t install on it because of an installer bug, but we released a minor version, called RubyCocoa-0.11.1p1, that you can get from the usual location: > **[RubyCocoa - Browse Files at SourceForge.net](https://sourceforge.net/projects/rubycocoa/files/)** > > RubyCocoa is a Mac OS X framework that allows Cocoa programming in the object-oriented scripting language Ruby. > So unless I figure out how to get around that I’m up a creek. > > Also what is cat a.rb. I don’t find cat in Ruby, and man cat, tell me > it’s concatenate and pring; but that doesn’t make sense to me in this > context. Much to learn. cat is an UNIX command-line tool that has nothing to do with Ruby here. Just look at the 3 lines of Ruby code 🙂 Laurent ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/5 "2007-07-04T17:16:25Z")
There is also an AppleScript gem. So you could use that to control any GUI app on OS X that has AppleScript events enabled. Most apps from Apple do have it enabled, and most apps for OS X have it, since it is one of the many things that the OS and the Cocoa framework provide to app programmers with very little effort at all. ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2007, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/6 "2007-07-04T19:51:56Z")
Laurent S. wrote: > On 7/4/07, 12 34 [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > Either I’ve already installed RubyCocoa or I can’t. Neither machine will > > allow the pkg installer to work. And I tried by hand recently on my iMac > > desktop, and I got an error at some point. > > Ah, maybe you are running 10.4.10. The latest release won’t install on > it because of an installer bug, but we released a minor version, > called RubyCocoa-0.11.1p1, that you can get from the usual location: > > [RubyCocoa - Browse Files at SourceForge.net](http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=44114) > > Laurent LoadError: no such file to load — osx/foundation I’ll be back later. ---
**Author:** ![mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mtnbiker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mtnbiker)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubyosa-for-quicktime/108480/7 "2007-07-05T23:59:23Z")
12 34 wrote: > LoadError: no such file to load — osx/foundation Still have problem with RubyOSA With solution using rb-appscript from HAS, I’ve got what I need for now.