ActiveX Controls from LabVIEW Web Server

[Ian Renton]

I'm developing an application that needs to display video as part of its interface.  I'm using the Windows Media Player ActiveX control for this.

This works properly when the application is run from within LabVIEW - I can tell the control to open a file, and it plays happily.

However, my app needs to run from a web page.  I'm using LabVIEW's built-in web server.  Problem is, whilst every other control/indicator works fine, the Media Player control doesn't.  It appears, but it neither loads nor plays files when requested.

Is this kind of ActiveX-within-ActiveX abuse just not supported, or am I doing something wrong?  Is there another way of displaying media (JPEG and MPEG), or another way of running the VI from a web page, that would work around the problem?

LabVIEW 8.2, Win XP SP2, WMP 10.

Thanks

[NathanK · Accepted solution]

To answer your questions:

1) Hosting an ActiveX control in a front panel that is displayed as a remote front panel is not supported.

2) There is no other mechanism to view and control a VI from within a web page that would work around this problem.

What you are trying to do is inherently very complicated. One way you might approach the problem is to embed the video in the web page separate from the VI front panel. This would make it difficult to have the VI control the video but it would make it possible to display the video in the page. The video could be simply downloaded from the web server in 8.2 or in 8.6 it could be streamed from a web service VI.

Another alternative is to use the IMAQ vision control. This works well over remote panels and there are VIs to read image data from avi files. With a good network connection this control can do a framerate of 10-15 fps. It will not help you with audio if that is a requirement.

Sorry I don't have a magic solution for you. Let me know what you decide to do- it's an interesting problem.

Nathan

[Ian Renton]

Thanks for the quick reply! The code that determines which video file should play and when is quite complex, so I'd prefer to keep the player inside the VI if possible. I'll look into using IMAQ vision to see if it supports the codecs we're using. Thanks again!