creating a seamless experience with lots of flvs

[fu-meng]

thanks! i was hoping someone would catch that. dealing with this yo-yo was a complete waste of an hour this morning.

by the way, hope your project is going well.

take care. - fumeng.

[DjRubbish]

no problem.

Yes my project is going fine as I hit on something to eliminate the delay between flv's just now.

As my project involves seamlessly putting together just 10 (on average) flv's, I am building a 'stack' so that when one gets 100% loaded and is playing, the next one begins loading but is paused and invisible.

That way all flv's are ready to start on demand with no delay and all are downloading whilst the viewer is watching a 100% loaded clip. The users don't know how hard the flash player is working to deliver a smooth ride as it never stops to buffer except on a connection that is too slow to deliver video.

I believe you have 50 flv's that can be called in any order, is that right? If so, I don't think that solution will be much use to you.

This solution works because my flv's get shown in the same sequence every time.

What about your project? How's it going?

[fu-meng]

i'm going to go with the exact same approach. you're using the netstream to load an external flv into a video object and hide it, right?

what i'll do is that whenever a user enters a specific section of the site, i'll do the very same except using the media display component to load it and hide it behind-the-scenes.

so your solution will work for me because as soon as a user enters a section then there are 4-6 flvs that will indeed be played in sequence and i'll know exactly which ones they are.

my problem is that sometimes an flv is only 10 seconds long...or even less. so is that ample time to get enough of the next flv in line loaded up? because i'm dealing with so many small flvs (all are 1MB or under) i believe the answer is yes.

i think our collective approach is good. def. post along a link when yours is done and i'll do the same.

take care and best of luck. -- fumeng.

[DjRubbish]

ok, mine won't be out until the end of November earliest and maybe not til the New Year. But I'll post a link when it's done for sure.

oh and thanks, it's been really helpful having someone to bounce ideas off.

[fu-meng]

likewise...

[DjRubbish]

I never answered your question...

yes I am doing exactly what you said: "using the netstream to load an external flv into a video object and hide it"

[silentweed]

When i want to load flvs in the background i do something like this:

ns.play("some.flv");
ns.pause();

This starts the downloading the flv but immediately pauses the flv as well, so in effect you have that flv loading in the background.

[fu-meng]

that's exactly how i'm doing it except that i'm using a media display component and doing:

code:

---

myMediaDisplayComponent.setMedia( "some.flv" );

myMediaDisplayComponent.play( 0 );

myMediaComponent.pause();

---

[DjRubbish]

I'm so close.

But I have a problem.

Using Internet Explorer on windows, the NetStream.close() method seems to cause an ugly pause.

have a look

Got any ideas, please?

[fu-meng]

errr...i'm on a mac here. won't be able to check until i'm home...much later tonite.

when and why are you using NetStream.close()?

[DjRubbish]

hello,

I wondered about whether you were using a mac after I posted the message. How was it? (if you looked)

I'm using the NetStream.close() method here:

ns.onStatus = function(streamInfo)
		{
			switch(streamInfo.code)
			{
                                case "NetStream.Play.Stop":
				// make sure buffer clip is hidden
				this["target.buffer_clip"]._visible = false;
				// make sure associated video object on stage is hidden
				this["target.videoHolder"]._visible = false;
				// assign var to reference next NetStream
				
				var x = ns["whichVideo"] + 1;
				// start next video
				ns["currentVideoObject"].startClip(x,ns["currentVideoObject"])                                                                      
				// close current stream
                                 this.close();
                                 break;
// more case statements go here... but this is the one that's causing the pause
                              }
                        }

and I'm using it as the first video starts bugging out and keeps returning "NetStream.Play.Stop", so I thought it would be easiest to 'kill' it by closing its individual stream.

[DjRubbish]

Got it sorted now, changed the this.close() for this.seek(0) followed by this.pause()

Which stops the videos 'juddering' as Internet Explorer tries to cope with the NetStream.close()

[fu-meng]

hey there. glad you got it worked out. sorry i wasn't around this weekend to help out.

when i check on my mac, the video loaded always stays at 100% whereas my pc would change the one just viewed back to 0%. not sure why it does that. i didn't experience any delays on a mac and essentially what netstream.close() does is send the playhead back to 0 -- just like your working alternative is doing.

not sure why it's happening but glad that you got it fixed.

[DjRubbish]

no probs!

the thing on the site I linked to isn't my project for work.

I can't release any details about the work thing til it launches.

Has yours launched yet, or do you have a test URL you can show me? I'm interested to see the differences.

If you haven't, don't worry. Just interested is all.

[fu-meng]

mine is set to launch first week in february. i wish i could show it to you but i'm under a strict nda with a big company. ****! sorry. i'll post it up when it launches.

[DjRubbish]

Totally understand that, I have the same deal with the company I work for.

Til February then!

[fu-meng]

well, it's february and i'm back. here's the link to the site, i launched it today:

www.gillettefusion.com

in the end i created a series of 3 or 4 methods that handled the loading, the playing, and the toggling of flvs. i ended up with 43 flvs and 4 media display components to toggle them all.

happy to be done.

[Wheels]

I think if you close the netstream you have to re-initialize it - so reassigning it to the new target file should make the transition smoother.

[DjRubbish]

Your video is looking nice and smooth. I had no problems viewing it and I'm also streaming a radio feed at the same time. Is that alpha on it too?

Good work! What's the feedback been like?

I know what you mean when you say "happy to be done" (that struck a chord), it's always the initial stages of a project that fly by for me and then the final stages seem to take forever.

Whoa, though, it's a lot more sophisticated than my project which is a game for 3-6 year olds.

I enter the final round of coding this week and then we're into tweaking design, narrative and gameplay elements. So I don't have a launch date yet but I hope it will be soon. I'll let you know.

[fu-meng]

hey there.

congrats on wrapping up your project soon. best of luck with it, i'm sure it'll be great.

even though this site launched feb 5th we've been continuing to make changes, i.e. bug fixes, recompression of video, etc...

and yes, the video is alpha'd out over the background. but a bitmap bkgd is composited inside the each flv. yes, we had to use flash 7 so couldn't take advantage of the alpha channel in 8.

feedback has been mixed so far. our client didn't have the proper server setup to support such a bandwidth hog such as this site (plus all the traffic that went to it). so when it first launched it broke. then we had to help our client set up with a content delivery network.

the site was built for those with a very fast connection. there's a large upfront load and we had to recompress the videos again with a lower data rate (much to my shagrin). that'll be up in a few days. but overall people are happy with it and i am sometimes happy with it. it'll be up for a year then it's down.

again. best of luck completing your project. certainly post a link to it when it's done.

best. -- fumeng.