4 Those Interested in Flash

totally lost wrote on 2/1/2007, 11:43 AM

I spoke with On2 yesterday about a tech support question and got some good advice that I would like to pass on to my Vegas brothern. It's so awesome when a tech support guy delivers advice above expectations, it speaks enormously about On2 as a company. The phone call was followed up with this email! Again, above and beyond expectations! I'll keep you posted with any progress.

Hi John,
This is a follow-up to phone conversation. This reply is being written Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 7:43 PM EST.

First, thank-you for the Sony Software website. I have printed out the Plug-in Development Kit (PIDK) and will try and get some of our development team to look at it.

Second, on your player questions, I would seriously look at the two players we talked about. One thing I did not mention is that currently we have a bug where if you picked stop on first frame, you don't get the first frame as we talked about, but a grey panel.

The following is taken from the text I send to users looking for a patch to this problem:

You can pick up an open source flv player from the web and use this player to output your flv files. It has the drawback that you can't encode to SWF files but this is actually an advantage since SWF files have a 16000 frame limit (imposed by Macromedia). As well, these players allow your flv files to stop on first frame (something our software does not permit when you use make player). And finally you create the image that you want to use as the player thumbnail - not as automated but you can pick which image you want to use (something we don't support yet either). To go about using this procedure:

1. I would encode all files to FLV file format.

2. You can obtain a SWF-player for FLV files from the internet. Go to one of these web sites, download and install the files. Then copy the required files up to your ISP.

Wijering Video player: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=Flash_Video_Player [used for playing flv on web]

Martijn Devisser FLV player: http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/article/flv-player-updated [used for playing on desktop]

Peldi's FLVplayer:
desc: http://www.peldi.com/fmswiki/index.php?title=FLVPlayer
srce: http://www.peldi.com/blog/images/FLVPlayer.zip

Wimpy: http://www.wimpyplayer.com/ [$29.95]

Proxus:http://www.proxus.com/ [$25]

Flowplayer: http://flowplayer.sourceforge.net/

3. If you use jeroen wijering's player (for example only), then you would use the following code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="220"
wmode="transparent" data="flvplayer.swf">
<param name="movie" value="flvplayer.swf" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
<object/>

you have to name your flv file video.flv and put it in the same directory as your webpage and the flvplayer.swf.

4. If you don't like to be told what your file is called or which directory it is stored, then you can use the following code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="220"
wmode="transparent" data="flvplayer.swf?file=movies/holiday.flv">
<param name="movie" value="flvplayer.swf?file=movies/holiday.flv" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

it gets a bit more complicated - but not by much. Note, the width and height must be changed.

5. Finally to add autostart:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="220"
wmode="transparent" data="flvplayer.swf?file=movies/holiday.flv&autoStart=false">
<param name="movie" value="flvplayer.swf?file=movies/holiday.flv&autoStart=false" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

Note: the need for the ampersand to join the 2 variables together.

6. To add a jpg placeholder for the video player, create an jpg with the same as the flv file: ie. if you have video.flv, then create video.jpg

7. For example, this is one of my test files:

<html>
<head>
<title>Flash FLV Player</title>
</head>
<body>

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="flvplayer.swf?file=VOX-Berlin.flv&autoStart=false" width="400" height="220" wmode="transparent" >
<param name="movie" value="flvplayer.swf?file=VOX-Berlin.flv&autoStart=false" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>

</body>
</html>

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 2/1/2007, 12:08 PM

Thanks for the link. I'd be interested in doing business with them.

I try to only purchase products from companies that have this sort of tech support. Pretty hard to find, but it does exist. For instance, the backup program Trueimage has great tech support (also happens to be a very good product).

Unfortunately, too many companies think of tech support as a "cost center," which is MBA-speak for a money sink hole that doesn't return anything beneficial. Obviously this is short-sighted and stupid. How much money could a computer company charge if it sold computers that included a tech support plan where you could talk with or email, or chat with a technician that actually understood computers and could troubleshoot the problem? Instead of $500, would you pay $1,000 for this? I bet enough people would that you could start and then run a pretty good-size computer company, built on this premise.

birdcat wrote on 2/1/2007, 3:01 PM

I use their Flix product (standard edition) to encode SWF for web distribution - It is single pass but very affordable (only $39). You may want to spring for the pro version ($249) which has a two pass method and generates very nice and compact flash.

Overall, the product is truly superb and easy to use (I need that).

Laurence wrote on 2/1/2007, 8:30 PM

I just bought the pro version the other day. I could do encodes with the $39 version that looked fine, but I had to render a deinterlaced master first. The pro version can use a regular 1080i Cineform master and can deinterlace, scale and two pass render to whatever flv format you want. It will also generate the player html code. Those things will really save me a lot of time.

I still like DivX better, but I've run into the fact that installing the simple DivX player and codec is simply beyond the technical ability of most of my clients. Everybody can handle Flash though.

Of all the ways of delivering video: Flash, DivX, WMV or Quicktime, I like the quality of Flash the least, but what can you do. If you want consistant delivery without end user problems, Flash is still the best way to go by quite a wide margin.

Anyway, the On2 Flix Pro encoder does a really good job and the fact that it can use my regular Cineform masters makes putting Flash video on the Net quite painless. Using Flash saves me a lot of time answering emails.

Soniclight wrote on 2/2/2007, 7:36 AM

totally lost,

Thanks for the info about this company. As others stated, support says alot about company attitude -- and/but the fact that Flash 8 has now replaced its encoding with On2 says much about the company's product too.

Since I can't afford the Pro 8 version, I'll probably get the Standard 8. So no double-pass, but then there are ways to tweak the pre-encoding file in Vegas to probably compensate a bit (sharpness, levels, etc.).

-------------------------

So, hey, you're anything but "totally lost"...

You helped me and most likely other readers of this posting find something of value -- kind of like an inside industry secret most people don't know about :)

>>> CORRECTION of earlier version of this posting: I had mentioned On2's VP7 as being free encoding software. It's not, it's a free codec. Sorry about that,.

Soniclight wrote on 2/2/2007, 7:59 AM

I might also add this info for those here that as I are on a limited budget but would like to have a basic Flash website creation application. As described at the site:

"Powerbullet is a small, simple program for creating presentations in the Flash™ format."

No, it's not a Dreamweaver level and it hasn't been updated in a while, but it is free and it is WYSIWYG. Don't let the simplicity of the program or its interface fool you. With some practice, you can get pretty creative.

There is supposedly a Pro version, but I think it's been discontinued. My guess is that the developer has moved on to other things but still leaves it available for anyone.

I first discovered Powerbullet a few years ago but wasn't ready for Flash then. I'm now going to finally get into it for my little website is purposely simple and understated, but oh-so late-90s. Time to Flash it up a bit :)

Cuz...

I'm now a progressively getting-better-at-it filmmaker thanks to Vegas. Ergo: I now make beyond-still-images content! Being my own webmaster, site designer, etc., this just happens to be very useful - lol

PowerBullet: http://powerbullet.com/

rmack350 wrote on 2/2/2007, 8:22 AM

If you're talking about Flash Pro vs Flash Basic, I've always read that flash Basic is just not worth the money. I don't know why though. I'm using Pro and have never seen the basic version.

Playing FLV files on the web requires the flash player (which plays swf files) and then a swf file to act as the player interface. Once you've got these then the swf file can be instructed to play an FLV file, as shown in the code examples above.

The html code examples and downloadable swf interfaces make it possible to distribute FLV movies over the web without having to have any sort of flash authoring tool at all. You just need something that can encode FLV files. That could be an On2 product, or Sorenson Squeeze (which includes an On2 licensed VP6 encoder), or any of a number of other encoders.

Keep in mind that many encoders don't encode the FLV file in VP6 format. This is On2's format and the best thing going in Flash these days.

So what you end up distributing is a web page, a swf file for the player interface, and the flv media file.

While you can embed a video in a swf file, there is a limit to the number of frames and sync is far from gauranteed.

Rob Mack

seanfl wrote on 2/2/2007, 10:28 AM

thanks much for posting that person's note...I had been looking for a couple of those players and never found them after searching for about a half hour...

I've been impressed with on2 after using their flix pro for the past 6 months...good quality and flash video seems to work the best out of what I've tried.

Sean
------------------------------
broadcast voiceovers

totally lost wrote on 2/2/2007, 11:18 AM

Thanks for the "thank yous" lol ; ) To be honest I am really hoping On2 builds a plug in for Vegas! A while back I made the same suggestion to them and they said that they tried contacting Sony about doing so, but to know avail. Then a Sony service rep pointed me to the developer page. So hopefully we connected the dots for On2 and they will develop a Flash plug-in (2 pass please) for Vegas. I imagine it will all come down to how easy it will be to develop and the potential market.

Again, I'll keep everyone posted.

BTW - When it comes to video I am "totally lost". I am beginning to find my way, but add internet video and video for cell phones and it's a major learning curve. Jack of all trades "average" at none. I'm just a baby! : ) (only 6 months of video experience) Give me 2-3 more years and I can move up to "Sort of have a clue". ; )

rs170a wrote on 2/2/2007, 11:23 AM

Jack of all trades "average" at none. I'm just a baby! : )

We all got started somewhere :-)
Just yesterday, I was watching a video that I had done 20 years ago.
Uggh!! I cringed all the way through it :-)

Mike

totally lost wrote on 2/2/2007, 11:57 AM

lol! I feel that way about stuff I did 6 months ago. The scary part is that at the time I thought I was the next Speilberg!

So just like 6 months ago, now I think my stuff is pretty good. Fast Forward to 3 years and I will look at my stuff that I am doing now and cringe! Man I'm __cked! lol!! But I'm having fun!

Upward an onward!!

rs170a wrote on 2/2/2007, 12:39 PM

But I'm having fun!

That's the idea!!
And the day you stop having fun in this business is the day to start looking for another job.

Mike

totally lost wrote on 2/2/2007, 1:49 PM

Forgot to mention...thank you for the encouragement.

John

riredale wrote on 2/2/2007, 2:29 PM

As an aside, the web seems to be quickly consolidating on flv and Flash. Last week our local paper ran a feature story on how the half-dozen presidential candidates were running slick websites with video and such, and I looked up each one. From Hillary to Obama to Romney and on down the list, they all had nice videos on the home pages. All Flash.

Only a few local news outlets seem to be stuck with wmv. I don't see anything Real any more--chalk that up to the annoying Real player installation process, I assume.

Laurence wrote on 2/2/2007, 5:27 PM

I had been using the On2 basic encoder for a few months with a free flv player I found (after going through a bunch of different ones) on the Internet. Now that I have the pro version, I'm noticing that the players that come with the pro version play the video back noticably better than the free flv player I was using. The skins look terrible for the mostpart (not even as good as the free player) but the playback is better. Anyway, using one of these players, the playback is much more competitive with DivX, WMV and Quicktime.

Chanimal wrote on 2/4/2007, 10:52 AM

I went through the homework about a month ago to convert multiple videos to Flash for 3M. I wanted the double pass, plus the latest format.

Adobe uses the single-pass OEM version of the On2 codec. Sorenson Squeeze uses the double pass OEM from On2, but it was much slower (obviously not optimized--although I heard they have a faster update).

I discovered that Camtasia Studio has double pass On2 codec and it was cheaper (I could upgrade). If you don't already have it, for the price of the others you get the On2 codec, double-pass, plus all the Camtasia features.

I've encoded multiple videos and it works great and includes all the templates, etc. to create finished Flash files (I don't use FLV since the file size is bigger and the size is limited to about 9 minutes (needed 17 minutes for two of my files). Easy to use AND you can try it for 30 days (WITH the full codec, etc. (not a crippled demo)). I finished much of my project for free and then picked it up.