InstallAware

I'm trying to add a custom avi file in one of my dialog boxes but not having any luck. I added an Animate control from the win32 tab and it works fine when I use one of the builtin animations but whenever I try to enter my own file it just says "Invalid property value".

I set the CommonAVI property to aviNone and enter my filename in the FileName property (although I've tried putting my name in the CommonAVI fields as well). I've added the custom avi to the creatives section in installaware and it copied it to the project path, which is the same as the path where the dialog boxes are. I've tried restarting IA and the dialog editor to make sure it's been saved properly. I've also tried copying the avi file to C:\\Program Files\\InstallAware\\InstallAware 8\\interop\\templates which I've seen some suggestions to do around here.

Any suggestions on how to solve this would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this is IA Studio 8.

Following these steps should get it to work for you:

1. Copy the AVI to templates (as you have already done)
2. Also copy the AVI to the same folder as the dialog (.DFM file)
3. If it does not already exist, create a plain text file with the file name of the dialog and the file extension .DFM.BAGGAGE file (ex: mydialog.dfm.baggage) with the name of the AVI file (ex: myavi.avi) on the first line of this text file and nothing else, save (ex: in Notepad)
4. In the dialog editor, in the FileName field, enter the name of the AVI only - NO path information (ex: myavi.avi), press ENTER

That should do it! If you're confused about baggage files, take a look at the built-in themes Attractive, Titanium, Emerald, Swoosh, etc.

Thanks for your reply, MichaelNesmith. Unfortunately that did not do the trick, still getting the same result.

Post the dialog and the AVI here, or email me, I'll do it for you and send it back!

Thanks for your offer but at the moment I'm just playing around with a sample avi to try it out, I'm waiting for an animation from a third party.

If I send you the files, would I be able to replace it with the correct file once I get it? If I understand how these files work correctly I should be able to do that by simply switching out the file since the actual avi is not embedded in the .dfm file, right? Filenames shouldn't matter much.

Yes, if you're OK with that, just copy the dialogs from the Attractive theme for instance, they already work with an AVI...

I have tried all of these steps and at least on x64 I can't ever put only the name of the .avi file in the designer, I always get 'Invalid property value'. So I think at that point I'm stuck as I can't ever set the 'active' property to 'true' either for my custom animation. I have put this in the templates folder, tried changing the name in the .baggage file to file with no path, etc.

This is with an .AVI file. Is there another type of file, perhaps an animated .gif or swf file, that may be more likely to work?

On VistaX64 if I build on Vistax32 I can now get the animations animating. So far this makes me think that there is something about running the designer on x64 that is why the animation isn't animating; I'll try to do some additional testing.

Thanks.