Sorry to post this as I am sure little parts of this have been answered but I can't seem to get a 'big picture' idea and since this is my first attempt at video syncing in Flash 8 I thought I'd just start this new post :-)

MAIN GOAL: I have a flash presentation that shows some maps and such. I wanted to add a video of someone explaining what the maps are about over top of the maps. I have attached an image below of what the video will look like to help you guys grasp what I am talking about:



I first used Adobe After Effects to make my video transparent and save it to FLV format.

Then I fired up Flash 8 and put the FLVPlayback component in the timeline. I set the contentPath to the external FLV file because I want it to stream the video. Now this is where I get confused and want to make sure I am doing this the right/best way.

I am concerned because I know the first part of my presentation is say 30 seconds. The corresponding FLV video is 30 seconds. But if I just put it in there and say the buffering of the video playback took a while then wouldn't that throw the entire timing off?

I then read about cue points. I think this is a robust solution but I am lost. I don't want to do anything fancy, here's what I am thinking...

1. Presentation Starts --- Corresponding video starts
This is simple because the video should start
streaming because the video is set to autoplay.

2. Presentation is at 10 seconds and another map is about to be shown. Now the video should be at this spot to because I have timed it all out in the timeline to match the video but what if there was a buffering delay? That means the video would still be talking about the old stuff and I wouldn't want to continue changing the maps until the video is at the 10 second point.
- How do I use a cue point to confirm this?
- Is it better to just set a cue point and use that cue
point to call a command like gotoandPlay(10);?
- Is there even a need to check this or does Flash sync for me?


I think my idea of having the cue points set in the video (can Adobe After Effects do this or do I need to set cue points via the FLVPlayer component?) trigger the gotoandplay() commands as necessary would be the simplest way to achieve syncronization... is that what you guys think?

I am just looking for the simplest and most elegant way of doing this so all of your ideas are welcomed and appreciated. Please help get me on the right track guys! Thanks :-)