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! :)

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

thanks again!

Thanks!

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?

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

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!)

I’m currently having the same problem as Jen. I’m assuming you didn’t get the perpetual buffer bar in your example? I’m using AS3.
I’ll probably resort to making a custom component and removing the buffer bar from it, if I can’t find a better fix.

thanks

Thanks for the great tutorial. I followed your instructions and though I’m not a Flash expert at all, I was able to get my webpage, which has 7 embedded Flash videos, to work as you instructed. (I used ActionScript 2, BTW.)

However, I have one problem that I’m hoping can be fixed. Now that the FLV file doesn’t load, the progress bar of the Flash controls just spins (like a barbershop pole) as if it’s trying and trying to load but can’t. Is there any way to remove this? It may seem like a small thing, but I’m worried that visitors to the site may think that the videos aren’t loading if they see this graphic. You don’t tend to see the progress bar spinning when you visit other sites with embedded video.

I can provide a link to my page if needed. Thanks! Good post.

Thanks!

Glad to hear it!

Thanks! RSS is great, but don’t forget to browse around the existing articles too. :)