David Stiller’s blog

Here’s the third of my Notes on Design guest blog entries.  It was published yesterday already, but I missed it.  Too quick for me!

http://blog.sessions.edu/graphic-design/actionscript-figuring- out-where-to-begin/

A number of readers have expressed interest in the last handful of video-related blog entries.  These include “How to Build a Flash Video (FLV) Progress Bar” (Part 1 and Part 2) and, somewhat related, “How to Build a Basic Slider Widget (AS2).”  In some of the blog comments, mischa, Marius, and kweku were asking about how to display the load progress of an FLV file.  This was in addition to the existing functionality, which allows the user to see how much of the video has played and also to seek by dragging a knob along a track.  Questions included a) how to make sure the user couldn’t drag the seek knob beyond the loaded portion of the video and b) how to make the track itself clickable, so the user could bypass the knob if desired.  Let’s take a look at how to incorporate these new elements by adding them to the ActionScript 2.0 presented in Part 2 of the progress bar series.  Keep reading »

I’m on the technical advisory board for Sessions School of Design, a distance learning school based in New York.  Anjula Duggal, managing editor for the Sessions blog (DesignSessions:  Notes on Design), recently asked me to guest author a handful of articles for them, which I’m happy to do.  Thanks to Anjula and editor Katie Feo for helping to get me squared away! 

My first article is here:

http://blog.sessions.edu/web-design/how-to-save-bandwidth- when-displaying-flash-video/

kweku and nab have been interested a play/pause button — essentially a toggle button, something that “remembers” when it’s been clicked — and fortunately, the mechanics are fairly simple.  The key to the desired functionality is a Boolean variable.  Let’s take a look.  Keep reading »

In reply to a request from kweku, here’s another look at the basic slider used in the two-part “How to Build a Flash Video (FLV) Progress Bar” series.  This time, the slider widget, comprised again of two movie clips, will be used to adjust the volume of an FLV video file.  The ActionScript 2.0 involved is fairly straightforward and, in fact, can be cobbled together from existing articles on this blog.  Let’s break it down.  Keep reading »

In Part 1, not quite a week ago, we looked at a relatively simple way to track the progress of an FLV file as played without the FLVPlayback Component in a SWF.  Here in Part 2, we’ll make the knob draggable, causing the video to seek to the point in time that corresponds to the knob on its track.  As it turns out, the ActionScript involved doesn’t change all that much.  It may look like a lot more code, but the mechanics should be easy enough to follow.  Keep reading »

Following on the heels, at least conceptually, of “How to Control Video (FLV) without a Component” here’s a quick look at how to indicate the progression of an FLV by way of a custom made progress bar (thanks for the suggestion, Rick!).  In a follow-up article, I’ll show how to make the progress bar interactive by having the draggable knob seek to keyframes in the FLV.  It turns out that much of the code for this first part derives from “How to Determine the Completion of a Flash Video (FLV) File,” which shows how to determine video length, with and without the use of Components, in ActionScript 2.0.  In this article, we’ll be going the non-Component route, because FLVPlayback already has a progress bar.  Before we delve into the code, we need to prepare two small movie clips.   Keep reading »

Traditional VCR controls usually incorporate fast forward and rewind buttons, which either increase the playback speed of the video or quickly play it in reverse, respectively.  The result is that you can skip around in a video but still maintain some sense of where you are.  Useful as these controls might be, you won’t find them in any of the FLVPlayback Component skins.  (What appear, at first glance, to be FF/RW buttons, are actually a means to jump to optional navigation cue points in the video, much like jumping to chapters on a DVD.)  Is it possible, then, to fast forward and rewind FLV files?  Sure thing.  Let’s take a look.  Keep reading »

Not long ago, I answered a forum question at Community MX where the solution arrived entirely because I used the Debugger panel to find what I needed.  The developer’s issue took all of ten seconds to pinpoint, but it solved a real need.  It couldn’t have been easier, either, so I’ll share what I did, hoping it helps someone else just as quickly.

The need was this:  the developer was using the MediaPlayback Component (a precursor to the FLVPlayback Component) and wanted to disable a tiny, built-in triangle button that toggles a zooming/fullscreen-view of the FLV.  The Component Inspector panel shows no parameter to configure this button, and it doesn’t appear anywhere in the Components Language Reference.  What to do?  Debugger panel to the rescue.  Keep reading »

One of the more popular entries of this blog describes How to Jump to a Random Frame Label.  The ActionScript 2.0 involved is very straightforward, weighing in at a mere 5 lines.  Its sole purpose is to choose a random label once at the beginning, then go to it (then stop).  In the Comments section, a visitor named Heather asked for a variation in which the movie starts at a random label, then proceeds to the remaining labels in order, looping around to the beginning, if necessary, to hit each label once.  I offered some suggested code, and eventually a number of other visitors asked for yet another variation:  how to jump randomly to a whole series of labels — without repeats.  That takes a bit more code, but it’s certainly doable.  Let’s take a look.  Keep reading »