With the aid of two plugins, one Actions plugin and one Object plugin, true multithreading is now available for AutoPlay Media Studio 8.
Until now, if you needed to run an external program and get the exit code, your AutoPlay application would need to wait until the external application ended processing. With the Multithread plugins, you can now start any number of external applications, continue to work in your AutoPlay application, and still retrieve the exit code when any of the external application is terminated.
Not only can you retrieve the exit code, but you also can set a maximum amount of time for the external application to run. If the application is still executing when the time runs out, the program is terminated and a specific return code is sent to your AutoPlay application.
Although multithreading, semaphores and process synchronization is a fairly complex matter, all this is kept "under the hood". You will need to use only two actions - one for each plugin, to start and monitor external applications successfully. The provided documentation includes step-by-step instructions how to use the plugins in your project. A sample project is also available on the web page.