Lock screen saver timeout duration on OS X 10.5 client?

Our small company is working on implementing a standardized image installation of OS X for the roughly 15 or so Macs we have in the building. We have most of it set up how we want, but we are running into one big issue with locking the screen after a set period of time predetermined by IT.

I have been working with one of my co-workers who is a programming and command-line whiz, but the best we have been able to come up with is a script and daemon that kicks the user back to the login window (but keeps them logged in) after ten minutes of inactivity (using fast user switching). This is not a bad solution except for the fact that there appears to be a bug in QuickTime that doesn’t play well with fast user switching. Almost all of our Mac users use Final Cut or some other pro app that utilizes QuickTime heavily, and when they are kicked back to the login window and then unlock and come back, the apps will freeze up and cause lots of issues, killing productivity.

So what we would like to do is simply lock the screen saver timeout duration to ten minutes in such a way that the user cannot change it, or that if they do it basically has no effect. All the ways we’ve tried to do this don’t seem to work. We have attempted scripts and all sorts of command-line magic, as well as using the Workgroup Manager… no go. I imagine this would probably be an easy thing to do under Leopard Server, but we don’t have one and don’t plan on getting one.

There are two posts already on these forums mentioning this exact situation, but neither of them got anywhere, so I thought maybe I’d have better luck.

https://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=39&showtopic=22031
https://www.afp548.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=18&showtopic=3663

I have looked in many places for this and have even posted questions to other popular forums, but nothing has given me the results I want, so I’m conceding to the experts. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.