In terms of animation, I actually mean things like the file transfer avi used in Windows dialog boxes:
I'm trying to find out first if there is a way to access these files, if not how to use them inside windows forms. I know about SysAnimate32 and how it works to provide animations in windows forms.
How as users can we access or extract these from Windows?
You can use ResourcesExtract tool to extract resources from Windows executables or library files.
It can extract:
icons
bitmaps
animated icons
AVI files
cursors
other kinds of resources
and supports following file formats:
*.dll
*.ocx
*.exe
The test
Because of your comment, stating that it doesn't work, I've downloaded the 64-bit version of the tool (because I'm using 64-bit version of Windows 7) and tested it on .exe and .dll files, which I've found in C:\Windows\System32 folder.
I've run the tool with normal permissions, e.g. not using Run as Administrator
As source I chose every .exe file beginning with letter P
As destination I chose a new, empty folder
Picked icons, animated icons and avi files to extract
As a result I've successfully extracted 29 icons
Because you said it didn't work on .dll files, I've decided to check them as well, using same method as in (1.)
As you can see it also successfuly extracted files, including animated .avi file
Here's mentioned .avi animation - it happens to be the bar for loading action:
As you can see it actually works, maybe you've simply downloaded wrong version?
Related
I have the following need to implement on Windows: file with files.
Originally I was thinking to use directory with extension. Something like "folderA.myappext", so when user clicks on it in Explorer, my app is launched instead of folder being opened. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a way to do that. Then I tried to use Alternate Data Streams. This works just fine, but several problems with it:
It works only in NTFS, so no way to send it via email or FTP as is;
Only WinRAR can properly archive it, and you still have to do extra clicks in the UI for that;
The real file size (with all streams in it) is not shown in Explorer and does not participate in showing free/used space, which can very quickly lead to big problems for the user.
No, I can't use zip or any other way to combine files into one - this is high-performance app that also requires write streaming (i.e. it changes data all the time).
Any idea how else to achieve my need on Windows? I know on MacOS you can use 'package', but there is nothing like that on Windows. Any idea?
Something like "folderA.myappext", so when user clicks on it in Explorer, my app is launched instead of folder being opened.
You can't do it based on the extension because folders don't have extensions but you can do it with desktop.ini. Windows 7 and later supports custom verbs on folders.
A working example can be found here.
I discovered that Windows Photo has a pretty good basic video editor hidden in it.
My wife used it to edit a family video. Then she wanted to save the project (clips and project file, not just the final product) to USB drive.
Photo only gives you one option: Save to OneDrive. The claim is that other OneDrive devices running Photo will then be able to see the Project.
However, careful inspection of OneDrive yields no file with the title of the project and nothing that obviously looks like a video editing project file.
Does anybody know how they pulled this off and where they have hidden the project information? It can't be buried in the Registry, because that wouldn't transfer through OneDrive.
Every video clip used to create a new video, no matter what the source, is first copied to my C: SSD drive into my 'Pictures' folder.
I found the program created a new folder called 'Video Projects' in my Pictures folder.
The program does not delete these videos copied to my C: SSD drive when the program is through with them.
I must go in and manually delete the working copies of videos the program makes.
C:\Users\Your_User_Name\Pictures\Video Projects
There were two reasons I was looking into this.
1) For a video project, set the duration for all the photos in a storyboard to something other than the default. (Why isn't this built in?) and;
2) On another project, reset the duration that I'd set on a bunch of photos so it could auto sync with music.
So, I looked into this a bit, and for reference the data is stored in an Sqlite database called MediaDb.v1.sqlite located by default here (replace YOURUSERNAME) C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState
You can load the database using an Sqlite reader like DB Browser however you can't update it because it contains an unrecognised database collation (column character set) called NoCaseUnicode which you can about more here
There are others who are reporting similar problems trying to access this file.
I just finished a short project. I noticed an option to make a backup (click the three dots in the top right corner). That created a .vdp file. The file is 35 MB. The total size of the pictures and audio track is 30.1 MB, so it looks like it puts everything into this one .vdp file. The idea, as I understand it, is that you can take this .vdp file with you and import it into the video editor on a different computer (or same computer with new hard drive) and resume working on your video from there.
Of course relying on a proprietary file, in my opinion, is not great. You're trusting that Microsoft will continue to support the file format in the future. And as we've seen, over time, Microsoft has a habit of dropping support for popular applications that they bundle with Windows. Make sure you hang on to those original photos/videos!
My saved videos were located in c/Pictures/wallpapers/Video Projects
I would like to specify that images of a certain type (for example, .png) open by default in a program I've written when the file is contained in a certain directory. I've seen by searching (Change Default Program for a specific folder) that this is not possible on Windows 7 or 8.
I am saving these images in this directory myself, so I have some leeway with how I name the files. For example, I could change the filename a bit... perhaps to be example.myprog.png or something similar. Is there a way to set it up so files that match this filename pattern get opened, while other .pngs (in other directories) still open in the default viewer?
I don't really want to name these PNG images example.myprog (i.e., fully change the extension), because when the user is browsing the directory in Windows Explorer, I would like the thumbnail images to still show up. Also, users will be eventually transferring these images to their own machines, where they'll want to use standard image viewers to look at them.
If this is not possible, does anyone have another suggestion for how to tackle this problem?
As you are mentioning that files should be opened in a program that you have written, try to change the code of your program to read files from the specific folder. So, by opening your program from anywhere in your pc, you should be able to open files from specified folder.
I have a fullscreen OpenGL application, written in Scala. It is supposed to being launched as .cmd file that sets up classpath (some .class files, some of them are third-party libraries and optionally in .jars) and runs JVM with the right parameters. I'm wondering, is there an easy way to use this .cmd file as Windows screensaver? (without usual screensaver preview and settings dialog, they are not needed there) I guess I need to register the application somewhere? Is there any restriction on what file type it must be?
You can install a screensaver by doing as #Kevin suggested and right click the file and install (provided that this is a .scr file). Or you can copy the file straight to C:\Windows or sometimes C:\Windows\system32.
However, unless the file is a valid screensaver then it won't show up in the list of screensavers when you choose which one you want, so I think you are out of luck.
Unless you created your own screensaver, and then you might be able to launch the file from one of the events it has.
I want to use the windows OpenFileDialog class in C# to browse files for my application. I would then like the files to show up with previews in Windows' "thumbnails" view.
Is there a simple way to make this happen? I'm thinking there should be a way to encode the files so that Windows simply reads and displays the thumbnail information, even though it's an unsupported file type?
I know Windows Vista has a different interface (IThumbnailProvider as opposed to IExtractImage) than Windows XP, but I need it to work across platforms.
Thanks!
/ Jakob
You have to write a Shell Extension Handler Thumbnail Image Extractor. This is unmanaged c++ code that extracts the image from your custom filetype to display within explorer shell. You can find more about Shell Extension Handlers at the following link:
Creating Shell Extension Handlers