Using OLEView to Explore the QuickTime COM Interface

I'm currently working on some automation for my timelapse video project. As part of that effort I needed to explore the Windows scripting interface to QuickTime.  Here is a quick look at one of the tools I learned.

The QuickTime COM interface is poorly documented, but Rousseau mentioned the cool trick of using MicroSoft's OLEView tool to explore.  I had never used it before, so here is a quick walk-through.

• Download oleview.exe if you don't already have it (see References section).
• Open a command shell and run oleview.exe. It opens a window titled "OLE/COM Object Viewer".
• Open the "Type Libraries" tab (it's near the bottom).  You'll be interested in everything that starts with "Apple QuickTime" as well as "QtMovExporter".
• For example, double-click on "Apple QuickTime Player Library 1.0" to open the IDL viewer.  Look in the IDL panel and find the declaration "library QuickTimePlayerLib".  Now realize that this library is what a script refers to in a line such as  "WScript.CreateObject("QuickTimePlayerLib.QuickTimePlayerApp")".
• Expand the "dispinterface" tabs for IQuickTimePlayerApp, IQuickTimePlayers, and IQuickTimePlayer.  Compare the listed methods with the ones used in our script.
• Notice that the IQuickTimePlayer.QTControl method returns an "IQTControl" object.  It's not defined in QuickTimePlayerLib.  Close the IDL viewer window and return to the main OLE view window.  Double-click "Apple QuickTime Control 2.0" to view its interface and observe that it defines IQTControl.

This is a great way of checking the interface of any COM object.

References

I have lots more QuickTime references that will appear in an upcoming post about the automation itself.

• Automating QuickTime at the Command Line on Windows… XSIBlog article by Luc-Eric Rousseau, 2006.  This excellent post got me started in this direction.
• Microsoft Windows OLEView.  The link is for the Windows 2000 Resource Kit version.  You can also get it as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit.
• "Exploiting Perl on Windows with OLE/COM" (PowerPoint) presentation by Roth Consulting provides an excellent overview of Component Object Model (COM) and how it relates to WSH scripting.