3DFA Video Player

[ppedz]

I have created an external FLV video player in 3DFA. Well almost....

3DFA doesn't have the capability to support video yet... (hint, hint Rob) but I have been working on a way to allow complete control of the Flash Video object. Flash doesn't allow you instantiate/create the Video object through actionscript so what I did was create one in MX, export the object to a SWF, and then load the SWF using the loadMovie function/method into 3DFA.

By using this same method I believe it makes it possible to use the Camera and Microphone objects to capture live video from a Web Cam (although I haven't verified this yet) .

Flash only supports External FLV playback so use one of the converters, like Riva FLV Encoder http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?encoder&L=3, to convert your video. Also to get the full functionality of the player you need to have a v1.1 FLV with MetaData. You can use "FLV MetaData Injector" http://www.buraks.com/flvmdi/ if your FLV is not v1.1.

This player was created in 3DFA 4.5, I haven't had time to check it in 4.6 yet.

You will need Flash 7 or better to use it.

It and the source .movie are located at my site of http://www.myjavaserver.com/~ppedz/3dfa. The source download is about a 2.5MB download because I included the FLV you see playing on the site.

Hope you enjoy.

[SirN]

Interesting, I love the way you say ' does not support - yet ',

Can you (or you can) take a look here if you want:
http://www.xover.tv/ press 'Titta på tv' and then the videowindow control.
It's a swedish game tv-broadcast on the internet apparentetly in flash, with tv channel goal, they want to run the tv-channel like this on the internet...

I don't know anything about FLV and I'm encoding to large wmv (MB and resolution large) It'll take some time until I try your code and mess with it all, I'm thinking about how wmv can be locked to one harddisk like the music wma downloaded (paid) and also that it is a problem with the bandwidth limits at certain places. If I got some kind of lock in the wmv to stick approved on one harddisk then I don't want flash to protect the contents... Anyway, with screencams the protection is nada! Soo I don't know...

I got a chess video place were people log in (using flash good login security) but then the chessvideos are just lying there for those that log in and they can save to their harddisk and start spreading and give away their password for the login. I would like to see who logs in to watch the videos and I should do somethiong with XML and flash code (needs work)... Anyway its just for fun soo why bother, but maybe I will try this commersially (really!) later.

[maxxxo]

Hi.
Does it exist any free software to convert avi mpg to FLV file?
Thanks for any sugestions.

[ppedz]

The Riva FLV Encoder mentioned above is free and as far as I can tell it does avi and mpg.

[oopman]

Thank you SO MUCH for this post! Riva FLV works great! I tried your MOVIE in 3DFA 4.6 and it created the SWF but there was no sound. I played the FLV file through the Riva player and the sound was there. So, it seems like something in the MOVIE file is not playing the sound? It would be great to get this working in 4.6.

Anyhow, I found a free FLV player which you can embed in your website which will play the FLV. Its called FlowPlayer and can be downloaded at http://flowplayer.sourceforge.net/ . I did a quick test and it worked fine. The FLV that didn't have sound in the SWF file did have sound when played through here.

Enjoy!
Jim (.at.) iDimensionz.com

[maxxxo]

This flv player by ppedz is working fine for me. But I wonder what is inside the videoframe.swf ?
Thx for response.
Maciek

[oopman]

This flv player by ppedz is working fine for me.

Which version of 3dfa are you using?

But I wonder what is inside the videoframe.swf ?

ppedz says that the videoframe.swf contains the Flash Video object from MX which his 3dfa movie loads. 3dfa can't create a Flash Video object via Action Script, so this is his ingenius way of getting around that.

[maxxxo]

I use actually ver 4 rel6 beta 2 and v 4.7 beta 3
In both version are ok but You have to remember to export in flash ver 6.
greetings.

[ppedz]

Oopman is dead on about what's in the videoframe.swf. It's nothing more than a Video Frame that you can load so that the object you need to display video is available since (like oopman said) you can't create 1 through 3DFA or actionscript.

I haven't tried the player in v4.6 but it should work. Oopman did you try and export to v6 of flash or better like maxxxo suggests?

Thanks to both of you.

[oopman]

I was exporting to ver 7. Exporting to Flash ver 6 allowed the sound to come through! Thanks for the suggestion Maxxo! Just out of curiosity...any idea why it needs to be ver 6? Is it because the videoframe.swf file is ver 6? Will it work with any other versions..8,9?

And thanks again to you ppedz for creating (and sharing!) such a great 3dfa movie! I can't wait to check out your other Flash stuff.

[ppedz]

I'm looking at the player and just like you said it doesn't have sound with any other Flash version but 6. The idea you have about the videoframe is a good 1 I'll check it out and let you know.

[ppedz]

Ok, I found the problem with the sound and also I noticed that you couldn't drag the meter. I fixed both of these and I also upgraded the videoframe.swf from Flash 6 to 8 because it worked when exported to 6 & 7 but not 8. So now everything seems to be working fine in v4.6 of 3DFA when exported in Flash 6, 7, & 8.

I updated my site so you can download the latest version from there.

[ForumNewbie]

Yet again, some great work here ppedz !

I haven't had a thorough look at it yet, but this looks really interesting stuff.

M.

[ppedz]

You do some pretty nice stuff yourself but thanks for the comments.

[M@gician]

Hello ppedz,
I have just been looking at your video player and a couple of other things you've made with 3dfa (not bad dude) and it seems to be the only example around.
I can see your online working version, but cant get your example to work.
I am using 3dfa 4.9.7.2 and am wondering if that could be the problem.

Basicly i want to use your example to help with the learning curve to get some idea of what the hell i am doing before going on to (try and) build my own player for my website.

Any feed back/help you offer would be much appreciated as i think i need a hand to get this working.
Thanks in advance.

BTW, anyone else reading this, if you know how i can email ppedz about this, to speed things up if he has'nt been in the forums for a while, that to would be of help and of course appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[M@gician]

Hello ppedz,
I have just been looking at your video player and a couple of other things you've made with 3dfa (not bad dude) and it seems to be the only example around.
I can see your online working version, but cant get your example to work.
I am using 3dfa 4.9.7.2 and am wondering if that could be the problem.

Basicly i want to use your example to help with the learning curve to get some idea of what the hell i am doing before going on to (try and) build my own player for my website.

Any feed back/help you offer would be much appreciated as i think i need a hand to get this working.
Thanks in advance.

BTW, anyone else reading this, if you know how i can email ppedz about this, to speed things up if he has'nt been in the forums for a while, that to would be of help and of course appreciated.

Thanks in advance

TAKE 2

I have just hit the play button in 3dfa instead of exporting and recieved this message:

Method 'getBounds ( )' was given 0 parameters when 1 was expected on line 59 bar.start = bar.getBounds ().xMin + bar.offset
Null cannot be converted to a number on line 59 bar.start = bar.getBounds ().xMin + bar.offset
Method 'getBounds ( )' was given 0 parameters when 1 was expected on line 7 start = bar.getBounds ().yMin

Not sure where to look exactly (think its the video object) maybe you know what and where!!??