The DVD Player in Leopard doesn't display the Script menu. If you're not a "power user," this may not seem like such a drastic oversight, but it's painful to me because I've customized the DVD Player quite a bit through the Script menu.
"Forgetting" the Script menu would be a very odd oversight, considering that Apple has previously lauded the fact that the DVD Player is scriptable.
Additionally, I've just discovered that the many pages at Apple.com that previously described the special features of Apple's DVD Player have now been removed. A few of them redirect to Apple's "300+ New Features" page.
Something weird is going on here. The DVD Player is still scriptable, but Apple seems to want to hide that fact... I wonder if this has anything to do with the delay in support for HD and Blu-ray media in OS X. Perhaps some media companies were concerned that anyone with a little knowledge of the command line or an easily downloaded AppleScript could take screen shots from any DVD.
Regardless of the motivation, the fact stands that the DVD Player no longer has its own Script menu. So what does a power user do in this situation?
One uses the DVD Player application from Tiger, that's what one does. It still works fine (for now) under Leopard and it displays that jolly little Script icon exactly as it's supposed to.
Update: Mac OS 10.5.1 changed a few things and there's a new workaround necessary to keep the Tiger version of the DVD Player running under Leopard. See this post for more info.
[Updated November 29, 2007 03:19 PM by Andrew.]
Posted by AndrewNovember 01, 2007 11:22 PM
After some testing, I found that DVD Player in Leopard uses the standard AppleScript menu item (which must be enable through the AppleScript Utility application preferences). The AppleScript menu in Leopard also uses a new folder, so you will need to move your DVD Player scripts from
~/Library/Application Support/DVD Player/Scripts
to
~/Library/Scripts/Applications/DVD Player
This is a little less convenient because the menu bar includes other menu items, and the numbering and separater bits don't work.
Posted by: Tom Davis on May 15, 2008 07:38 PMYou're absolutely right and you've got a great tip there. The system-wide script menu works fine.
There's an additional liability with it, however, because it's yet another menu item taking up limited menu bar space and it appears in every application.
That's pretty wasteful if you've only got scripts to run in the DVD player.
Posted by: Andrew on May 15, 2008 08:47 PMDito, thanks to both of you. You've helped a mac noob. :-)
Posted by: Mike on July 4, 2008 05:33 AM| Post A Comment (3)