Comments on: How to Save Bandwidth when Displaying Flash Video

By: College Blog

College Blog — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:00:21 +0000

this post of yours was really nice.I need this information.Thank you.!

By: harish

harish — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:12:19 +0000

Hi,
thanks, tried it out, works like a charm…have been looking for a fix for this for quite some time now..you have really helped…

By: Gold Coins

Gold Coins — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:37:10 +0000

Thank you for this post.Very useful for me. I became your RSS subscriber.I feel good in here.

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:08:42 +0000

harish,

You can create your 5-frame (or approximately 5-frame) solid black FLV with Flash! Set your document dimensions to an appropriate width and height, set the background color to black, and then add a few frames. Then use File > Export Movie to export your minimalist content to AVI or MOV. From there, run your video file through the Flash Media Encoder, and you’re set! :)

By: harish

harish — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:04:07 +0000

Hi,
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. I had eight videos on the same page, and they were all loading at the same time..Was looking everywhere for a solution…until google led me to this page..

Though I still have to resolve the buffer bar issue..how do I create a flv file with 5 black frames??

thanks again!

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:45:24 +0000

Regan,

Thanks!

By: Regan

Regan — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:39:28 +0000

Thanks so much David! Looked all over for a solution to this. Your tute is very well written. I skimmed your tute and got it to work first time. Cheers!

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:07:45 +0000

Steve,

I haven’t used the Media components in a long time, so nothing undocumented comes to mind. I wonder if you might be running into an issue of the browser itself throttling down your HTTP requests?

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:33:41 +0000

Hi, nice topic.

I have something slightly different but related.

I wanted to have a number of flv’s loading and playing, never mind the bandwidth as they are a short preview of the full movies that can be viewed when chosen.

However I find that the flv’s load in and do not show up consistently, they just appear when they feel like it. Tempromental !

They are no more than 97k, download quickly and the controller I made runs showing that flash has actually loaded and is actually playing them.

I’m using flash MX pro (7.2) and use the MediaDisplay component and contentPath to set the movie on each instance created.

I’ve tried some things like stop and play commands on the instance after loaded complete, to try and get the screen to ‘update’ and show the movie, but nothing works.

I suspect it might be a memory issue as activity wise it can send the processor working, but regardless of that, has anyone any ideas to get the MediaDisplay to refresh, or start showing the movie it’s already downloaded.

Are their any ’secret’ MediaDisplay component calls that can get the video to display?

Cheers

By: David Stiller

David Stiller — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:20:40 +0000

Jen and Jon,

The easiest workaround I can think of is to create a very small FLV file — just a blank screen, whatever color you like, 5 frames, max — and set that small FLV as the default video. You can use the Parameters tab to do it, or precede the button event handler code with the instance name of your FLV component and a line of ActionScript:

// AS2
videoPlayer.contentPath = “nameOfShortVideo.flv”;

// AS3
videoPlayer.source = “nameOfShortVideo.flv”;

That way, your perpetual bar will stop being perpetual, because it indeed finds a file. Bandwidth still isn’t an issue — not especially — because the stand-in FLV is so tiny.

The button event handler code stays the same.

(Sorry for the delayed reply, Jen!)