Applescript won’t play movie when waking from sleep

applescriptaudioicalquicktimesleep-wake

I have the following AppleScript, which is triggered by iCal to act as my alarm clock:

set musicPath to the path to me as text
set musicPath to text items 1 thru -12 of musicPath as text
set musicPath to musicPath & "drumsolo.aif"

set volume output volume 90

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    run
    open musicPath
    tell document 1 --
    play --
    end tell --
end tell

I've also used 'play front document' and 'play document 1' for the block marked with dashes.
The problem is, System Preferences wakes up the computer on time (from sleep, 5 minutes before the script is triggered). The script works, opening the file and turning up the computer's volume.

But, when actually running the script for real, and ONLY then, the darn sound file won't play. It just sits there.
When I tested it w/ Applescript editor, it opens and plays fine.
When I tested it w/ iCal (resetting the event to a new time), it opens and plays fine.
When I reset the computer's sleep time and the day's event, it opens and plays fine.

It's only when I actually put my computer to sleep, rest for 8 hours, and the script wakes the computer that it doesn't play. Help!!

Best Answer

OK, I finally figured it out after writing 4 or 5 different iterations of the code. Adding a delay statement before 'tell document 1' worked— the script was running too quickly and trying to play the final before it was open.

Thanks, Lri!

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MacBook-Pro Battery – Troubleshooting Automatic Sleep Issues

To help debug sleeping issues, try the pmset command in the terminal:

$ pmset -g assertions

Assertion status system-wide:
   ChargeInhibit                           0
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep             0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep              1
   NoRealPowerSources_debug                0
   CPUBoundAssertion                       0
   EnableIdleSleep                         1
   PreventSystemSleep                      0
   DisableInflow                           0
   DisableLowPowerBatteryWarnings          0
   ExternalMedia                           0

Listed by owning process:
  pid 2520: [0x0000012c000009d8] PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.'AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,2:0'.noidlesleep"

In this case, it's the process 2520 messing up. Check it out in activity monitor and kill it (/usr/sbin/coreaudiod started by iTunes).

After that, run the command again:

Assertion status system-wide:
   ChargeInhibit                           0
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep             0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep              0
   NoRealPowerSources_debug                0
   CPUBoundAssertion                       0
   EnableIdleSleep                         1
   PreventSystemSleep                      0
   DisableInflow                           0
   DisableLowPowerBatteryWarnings          0
   ExternalMedia                           0

No flags for PreventUserIdleSystemSleep.

AppleScript for iCal events from Address Book entries

To set single alerts on all birthdays, you can avoid a script altogether:

Open Calendar Preferences in Calendar.
Under General, tick "Show Birthdays calendar".
Under Alerts, set an alert for "Birthdays".

I haven't taken the time to actually write up an AppleScript for the double alarm parts, but this article seems to cover scripting calendar alarms quite nicely. I would imagine you would just need to create a file or list in the script that contains the names of the events (which you can deduce from the standard naming convention Calendar app uses).

Also I am using Mountain Lion with Calendar app. I can't recall if the steps above work on older versions of iCal.

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