!!!! New Flash Beta Player!!!

[liquid_len]

Hopefully, the new beta will fix the cd ' stutter ' problem that has been an ongoing problem for me.( I did a cd project with video in MX, thinking it would be easier, and/or more desirable than doing it in Director.) ie, I would love if I could work in one format , seeing as that MX offers an easy way to sync video with animations, BUT it doesn't run smoothly on some machines...mostly windows 2k that I can gather, due to it's crappy memory management. Which is a major lack of foresight on MM's part...seeing as that Video is a SIZE INTENSIVE MEDIA and would therefore find it's way onto Cd and/or Dvd...y'dig?
D/l the beta at Macromedia and post your results(as I will)...

[jackofalltrades]

Thanks Liquid Len!

Nice to know someone is keeping us up to date...

Hope you don't get in trouble for double posting !!! :-)

I have also long awaited this beta. I'm going to test
it as I have a project with 21 video of 2-5 minutes each.

I'll post my results.

Thanks again!

[Wheels]

Don't double post! (jk)

Is it out Len? I looked around at Macromedia, but I didn't see it.

I'm noticing a problem with streaming .swf's over 5MB in the browser on Mac IE 5.1 and 5.2. I'm sure you guys on PC's won't notice this little glitch, but it's something to keep in mind - some people have "Switched".

There's a cool little video at www.heavy.com (great site) called Apple/switch/pissed. http://www.heavy.com/current/contagi...=240&width=320

I still love my Macs

Thanks for staying on top of this issue Len.

[jackofalltrades]

Yes it is Wheels!

http://www.macromedia.com/software/f...r/special/beta

[Wheels]

Thanks Jack!

[Jonathan_B]

Hi liquid_len,
So have you found anything out yet about the new player? Does it solve the stutter problem?

jb
http://www.wildform.com

[liquid_len]

...start testing tomorrow...will post with feedback...

[mccoryj]

Jack,

Looks like we are working on similar projects. I've got about 30 videos I'm trying to get onto CD. I'm trying to deliver by next week and was wondering if you had any results yet.

Thanks!

[jackofalltrades]

I'll start working on my project friday and over the week end. I'll
post my results as I go along.

Up to now, I have made a couple of tests and was satisfied but it was only with small videos.

And Wikke, nice of you to join in but this thread is about the new beta player to solve that particular problem...

Jack
----------------------------
Flashers...keep on flashing!

[wikke]

but this thread is about the new beta player to solve that particular problem..

Uhm, you're talking about this beta, right?
http://www.macromedia.com/software/f.../special/beta/

I just wanted to inform you that macromedia SAYS that they have fixed it... The text i posted is from the release notes of the beta player...

[Wheels]

Bump.

Any results yet? Jonathan and I are working on the video section of the FK book, any info on the Projector would be much appreciated.

[jjmt]

Hi, I feel your pain.

I'm having the same problem with a corporate project I've just about completed, well I though I had!

How are you guys going with the beta?
I just discovered this bug yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to go down that road, but it looks like it's the only real solution. I need to find one quickly as I'm under pressure to finish so the CDs need to be copied and distributed. I don't want to have this bug there, and as has been said, I too am uneasy about distributing a beta player, but it doesn't look like I have much choice.

I understand from what I have read so far that dumping the files onto the hard drive fixes the problem, and so does not loading any external swfs from the CD, just having one big file, not cool at all! This is not really an option for me as my whole large app structure is built around loading external movies (I have a small nav swf that everthing loads into). This was one of the best features of Flash for my money, until this! It would take me ages to change it now, time I don't have left on this project.


Here's how I discovered the problem if you're interested (comments I made in another forum yesterday, before I found your posts here):

I'm having a show stopping problem when running video in a Flash MX app I've done for CD-Rom. The thing is, it seems to work fine most of the time, but a couple of times the video just freezes on the first frame or so, and stops, or progresses one frame at a time if I'm lucky.

The problem has only occurred on a machine running MS Windows 2000 Professional so far, and it only happens one out of ten times or so, but as I said, it's a show stopper that I definitely need to fix. The computer has 262 MB Ram, so no worries there I'm thinking. The videos (swfs being externally loaded) range from between 1.1MB and 4.1MB, and they all freeze when the problem occurs when running the app. I've had no problems on a Pentium 2 with the same RAM so far.

The set-up I have: Ive got a main nav swf, and I'm loading each individual section of the content (externally loaded swfs) into an empty movie clip on this main nav timeline. I'm then loading other swf content (ie the swfs containing video) into mcs inside that content clip when needed, like so:

videoplayer.videoclip.loadMovie("videocontent.swf" );

[jason32b]

I've recently just encountered this problem as well. It seems that the discussions seem to end here. Has anyone been able to solve this problem yet? Ive downloaded the beta player, but it does not seem to help the situation. I am dealing with loading 29 separate swfs, with embedded flv's (about 1-5 megs each), on a cd-rom, using stand-alone mac and pc projectors. The series seems to play through fine the first time, but if it's replayed a few times, audio dropouts begin to occur or the entire program will simply crash on win2k machines. Havent been able to recreate to problem on a mac.

This is the first time that Ive dealt with loading video files in this way. Previously, Ive embedded all of the video into a single long form swf, which was loaded into the small cd-rom interface (a projector). It took a while to load, but it didnt stutter or crash.

Any help is much appreciated.

-Jason

[Jonathan_B]

Hi.
They just posted a new player on 12/4/02. It's supposed to fix the problem.
Give it a shot and let us know how it goes.

jb
http://www.wildform.com

[jjmt]

Yeah, this new beta is a release candidate build, so I hope the release version that fixes the problem is very close to release. I've had no problems with the beta so far.

I've been trying to hold off burning hundreds of CDs on my current project, as I (and my client) don't want to include a beta player, or the old standalone version that has the problem for that matter. I don't think I can hold off any longer though, as the project has to be completed by Christmas.

As the problem only occurs when loading files off CD, for those users that encounter the problem, I've had to include a message on the CD label along the lines of "for enchaced performance, copy the app. to your hard drive and play it from there, by dragging and dropping the folder named...etc". Not an ideal situation by any means.

It's been a real hassle I could have done without.

[jason32b]

yeah, Im in a simialr situation. Ive tried installing and testing the beta player, but I am experiencing the same eratic behavior. (dual 450 p3, win2k, 768 megs ram) Its not so much stutter, as it is the video pausing (but will replay when I use the video controls that I built into the interface) and the entire player occasionally crashing.

In my situation, I have am dealing with four different video presentations on a cd-rom, each which are made up of smaller video segements (20-30 swfs with video, 1-7 megs each). The video files correspond to still frames of a slide show. Everything is managed with XML, and the show plays through and auto-advances the video and slides. I have been preloading all the video at the beginning of each presentation so that there would not be any lag between slides.

I have built cd-roms like this previosuly in which I embedded all the video and graphics into one big swf which loaded into the interface. These were also loaded all at once, which took 60 seconds or more and freezes the player - its annoying, but it worked and did not cause crashes - at least that I have been able to create.

So I am wondering if the problem is becasue of loading everything at once, or if its becasue of some sort of issue with loading and unloading multiple smaller video files. Without preloading

I am going to do a test next using the stitch feature in sorrenson for each clip, and not preloading everything at the beginning....will post results...

[jjmt]

When running off CD, external swfs are preloaded into RAM automatically before playing I believe, whether you use a preloader or not, so if you have a 7MB video (swf) or larger, it should completely load all of it before playing.

I have a video player mc loading and controlling the external video clips (swfs that are between 1 and 2MB), and they all stuttered and kept freezing periodically on one test machine only (out of 10) - using Win 2000 Pro. Just happened to be my boss' laptop that she will be using to present the app. to high profile clients! It all works fine when the app is played off her hard drive.

[whiterabbit]

Just something I tried yesterday.

Using SV simulated video, (sequences of images) i burned a 5mb or so .swf onto an auto run cd. It took less than 8 seconds from insert to launch IE and begin playback which it then did so with no problem whatsoever.

I am on a Mac 450 DP with 750
The video was the combo vector/video large screen thingy we have online. http://www.mantaproductions.com/fullscreen

This was not a projector this was just a regular swf burned as auto run CD. using SV. Memory management is handled with our own SWF Optimizer.

Anybody want to try for themselves give a holler and I will post a swf you can download and burn to a cd.

cheers

JP

[jason32b]

yeah, they are loaded when they are triggered from a loadMovie, which freezes the player completely (although it remembers button clicks during this time and will rapidly execute them all as soon as it unfreezes). What I am dong is running a loop at the beginning of the presentation that successively preloads each of the external video swfs into an empty movie clip and then unloads that movie clip when they are all done. Visually, nothing happens on the stage, and the fact that this works means that unloading a movie or loading a new movie in the place of another doesnt remove it from memory.

I tried turning off the preloader and replacing some of the clips with swfs created from Squeeze using the stitch feature with a 2000K file size limit. This did allow the video to start playing fairly quickly - within a few seconds - but not fast enough for my purposes since i need to advance between the separate video files relatively instantly. Plus there is a bit of jittering in the beginning, and a slight pause between stitches.

Doing this also seems to have broken the target of my transport controls, such as the ability to pause. Losing this ability means I have no way to navigate through the video, even if I were to string them all back together as one long (stitched) clip. I could live with the initial jitter and the pauses if I was able to control the clip.

this thread has some discusson around this, but no one seems to have come up with a solution yet:
http://www.flashkit.com/board/showth...hreadid=395421

The SV route seems interesting, but I am a bit skeptical that it would be appropriate for my current project, which contains 2-3 hours of video (mostly small talking heads).

I think the only immediate solution is to go back to the old way of loading everything into one big file. Its not very graceful, it sticks when it loads, and it makes the whole xml system behind this irrelevant. But it didnt crash windows.

Ug. Guess its time to go back to director.

[1a2b3c4d]

I'm unclear on where we are right now. Does the 12/04/02 beta player fix the loading from CD problem? If not, has there been another release that does fix this?