Making good Flash videos / site - how?

LarsHD wrote on 6/26/2009, 2:40 AM

Hi!

A client of mine require me to make a simple web site with text and video. They want this:

1 - Black background

2 - A white border marking the borders of the video frame

3 - A player with "play" "pause" etc but that dissapears when the video starts

4 - The player control should re-appear when hovering with the mouse on the video

5 - Video size should be approximately 640x360

6 - It should start quickly

7- white text in 2 columns

I have tested the On2 Flix Prp FLV but I'm a bit confused about how to actually get this into the webpage... Also, when creating teh FLV / SWF and playing it back in an IE window the size of the video changes - which I don't want it to. I only want the video to be possible to play in the size that I have predetermined 640x360.

Also On2 has a complex install procedure and I'd like something more flexible. Alternative software that will do the job?

And the video should stay in its place in the text columns etc. And I dion't want it linked to YouTube or things like that.

I have FrontPage 2002... not exactly the most recent software in the webdesign business... But asy and straight forward... which I like.. And Microsoft Expression Web, which haven't really gotten into yet.

So as you can see I'm not an expert in designing websited that include video. However, I've done some very straight forward and clean webdesigns before using just FrontPage and I don't want to achieve anything complex here. Just a black webpage, nice typography and a clean solid video frame that plays well and looks good.

Any suggestions or advice here?

_________________________

So I'm sitting with nmy Vegas Pro 9 64 bit and about to render out to... what...? and then... what...? and then.... how to build the page...?

I suspect this is a subject that many are interested in: getting a well edited video to pop up elegantly on a webpage... and being able to do this fast and reliably.

I've tried with WMV and that works in a way but it seems like FLV is more universal and works better and can look "cooler" on a webpage...

There's nothing Sony has that will help here?

Best and thanks in advance
Lars

Comments

[r]Evolution wrote on 6/28/2009, 1:54 PM

Sounds to me like it's time to Collaborate with a Web Designer or Flash Guy.
If your knowledge is in Video but you have clients that want other things, such as you are asking... then it's time for you to do some networking.

Although you are on the right track to get your video to display the way you'd like... sounds like your knowledge is limited. This is why I'm saying that it may be wise to 'Network'.

ex:
If you spend 40 hours to get it the way you want but only make $400 that's only $10/hr.
(and it probably still won't be exactly what you want and your knowledge of how you did it will still be minimal at best) Then what if they want changes? More Time? Same Money?

If you collaborate with someone that knows how to do it and you pay them $50 to deliver exactly what you need... you can continue to do what you do best then deliver the end product faster and it will look a lot better. Your client will be happier, give you more work, recommend you more, you will make more money, and you will grow your business associations... once again leading to more work and more money.

Then when you are up to speed on how it's all done and put together, you can then do it yourself.

Until then... maybe this player & info will help you as the PLAY button is NOT part of the VIDEO.
JW Player
http://www.longtailvideo.com

Tom Pauncz wrote on 6/28/2009, 2:08 PM

Lars,
I won't go into technical details here, but I found the easiest way to do what your client needs, is to have a 3rd party, such as Vimeo, host the SWF file.

Having said that, and I am presuming you use Vegas to edit the video, render the video out using the SONY AVC template. You will end up with an MP4 file. You upload that to Vimeo ad let it do the flash conversion.

Once the video is online on Vimeo and you select it to play, you will see an "Embed" button. Click it and copy the code.

Now you can paste that code into your simple web page and when play is clicked, once the video starts the controls will fade away.

HTH,
Tom

amendegw wrote on 6/28/2009, 5:03 PM

How 'bout something like this... http://www.erinamende.com

It's a website I made for my daughter using ASP.NET and Silverlight (click on the "Install Silverlight" icon if you don't already have it installed).

ASP.NET has a learning curve associated with it, but given a wmv video, I'd guess it would take about an hour to whip up a website given your specs.

One pre-req is to use a hosting service that supports ASP.NET & Silverlight (I use godaddy.com - it's pretty inexpensive).

...Jerry :

UlfLaursen wrote on 6/28/2009, 9:49 PM

Hi Lars

I use the On2 Flix Pro and within that you can make a simple webpage. As far as I remember, you have to encode the FLV first. Then you load this back into the program, choose a player of the many that comes with it and then you choose the name of the .html file if you want to change the default.
You need to upload all 3 files (the html, the flv and the swf) into the same remote dir and then just launch the .htmlfile. You can of course edit it in an editor if you want first, and you can make some additional settings too within Flix Pro too reg. autoplay etc.

I use Flix Pro every week just to encode FLV's because I found it good and fast. I have tried the build in Adobe CS3 and Sorensen too, but they were much slower and not better quality.

/Ulf

Terje wrote on 6/29/2009, 6:41 AM

Hello Lars,

What you need is a few skills in webpage design, and honestly, the first thing you have to do to get that is to drop FrontPage and tools of that ilk. They simply are not feasible for real-world web pages, particularly not for professional use.

Typically a company has some sort of document management system that they use for publishing. You might have to integrate with that, so creating just a single page in FP2007 or similar is not going to work. I use Drupal for example. This means that if you create a black page with white text for me within the Drupal framework and I decide to change my site to use a green background with yellow text, then your page will adapt and automatically change color.

Your options are, as others say, to get together with someone who knows this stuff well. Find out how you want the page designed (create a mock-up in whatever graphics program you are comfortable with) and have them create a page for you. Make sure they know how to integrate it with any systems your client has. If your client doesn't have a system, have your partner help them understand why they would want to use one (he should know). Stay away from people who can put together a page in a hurry, they don't know what they are doing.

Contact me at terje(at)bergesen.info, and I'll give you some pointers.

NickHope wrote on 6/29/2009, 6:49 AM

Lars, if you want something totally unbranded, then the easiest way I've found is to embed a file in the Longtail FLV Media Player. You can embed MPEG4 in Flash now, it doesn't need to be FLV. You can encode MPEG4 in Vegas using either the Sony codec or the MainConcept. There are instructions in the Longtail site on how to set things up but it's a bit involved, especially if you have limited web-authoring experience.

Here's one (640 x 480, 1 Mbps video + 64 Kbps audio) I did recently.

(I encode my MPEG4 in x264 rather than in the Vegas codecs. My somewhat complicated method is at the bottom of this thread.)