FLVPlayer

The FLV Player is usable in any size that you like. Thanks to great functionality in ActionScript 3.0 I was able to make the player adjust it’s interface to the size with which it’s included in your web-page.

You can adjust the HTML that embeds the FLV Player to display in any size that you want. The form on the FLV Player download page gives you the opportunity to generate the HTML and preview for a “160×120″, “320×240″ or a “640×480″ version but it’s a matter of altering the width and height parameters in the HTML code to have it display in any dimension that you like!

What is this blog about?

This blog describes the process of me developing a small, user-friendly, easy installable FLV Player. As I was working on the website of artist Daan Roosegaarde as part of an attempt to make the website more social/shareable/web 2.0 the need arose for having a small piece of HTML code that users could embed into their site to enjoy Studio Roosegaarde movies in their own site. Up to that point we where using the Adobe FLVPlayback component for playing Flash videos (*.flv’s) but that did not go well with our attempt to make our player shareable…

What is FLVPlayer about?

Or why would you need it? The problem is that when you make an swf that plays flv’s using the FLVPlayback component you need a second swf to provide the skin for the player. It’s easy to set up such an arrangement on your own domain, but cross-domain it’s almost impossible to have the player (although on your own server) embedded in another websites HTML page use the skin swf on your domain. Since requiring users to both copy a piece of HTML and copying a skin would not be an user-friendly I decided that we needed a standalone player.

What is so special about this particular FLVPlayer?

Short answer. Nothing special yet. Only that it’s an Flash 9 ActionScript 3.0 implementation.

I started by searching for free FLV Playing components. I found a lot that I liked (like on Lee Brimelows Flash blog and this FLV Player from Advanced Flash Components) and they come in all formats. There are

• Actionscript classes that you can compile for yourself or embed in existing projects,
• Flash components that you can use by dragging and dropping them in your projects without the need of writing a single line of code and
• precompiled SWF’s that take parameters.

Most implementations I found where for buying and some where free.

Somehow all the ones I liked where Flash 8 implementations. Which sucked because for consistency I wanted to use the exact same player in the Studio Roosegaarde main website (Flash 9 with ActionScript 3.0) and in the code snippets intended for sharing.

What can you expect here

I’ve decided to implement my own lightweight FLV player, which I call “FLVPlayer” :). The first version is here and you can check it out for yourself. The player will evolve and I will post about it. I will post instructions on how to use it and your free to do so. Feedback is welcome!