About FLVPlayer
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!
December 10th, 2008 at 5:53 am
I like this player.. But it’s missing one feature imo; auto-hiding the controls if the user doesnt move the mouse for 1.5 seconds or longer.
If you build this in, i’ll donate you some money via paypal..
December 10th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Also, the resizing doesn’t work, if i tell it to be 652×352 in size it becomes about 100 pixels too large, leaving a black area on the top and bottom of the video in which the fullscreen & timescale controls are painted.
i’d prefer flvplayer stick to the size i tell it, and paint the controls over the video, also for a widescreen vid.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
The resizing Does work, i had to correct my HTML markup.. my bad.
But ehm, a volume function would be nice
December 27th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
It is great, but 1 thing is missing: how can I indicate the URL to use for the first image displayed? I want to choose wich image we can see in the box before a click starts the playing…
February 5th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Dude! This little player is awesome! Thanks for developing it, and thanks for sharing it… and thanks for making it free!
I’ll play with it some more and no doubt ask for a few features and splash some cash to support your fine work.
Again, thanks.
James.
February 5th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Hi James,
I’m glad you like my FLV Player! Bring on your features request, I’m very busy at the moment, but I was hoping to do some more work on the FLV Player somewhere within the coming weeks.
Thanks for your enthusiasm.
February 5th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Played with the player for a while, and I have only two remarks to make.
1) The full screen function should be grouped down below along with the functions and indicators. This would simplify usability.
2) A volume control would be most desirable.
James.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Hi,
great work, please allow a button to toggle volume (on/mute) and a parameter to play video in mute mode
- thanks.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:56 am
The player is awesome! Only problem is I can’t get the player to work when hosted on my website. Any ideas?
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:48 am
Hi Josh,
Thanks!
Have you tried generating the html embed code from this form; http://www.platipus.nl/flvplayer/download/1.0/
May 25th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Hi Theo,
Yes I did and it works great! But I would like to host the swf on my server because I don’t want to use up your bandwidth when I call it(I plan on using a lot of videos). For some reason, the player will not work when hosted on my server, I thought it was permissions, but I changed everything still doesn’t work.
Any ideas?
June 9th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I am having the same problem as the above “Josh”. I am trying to host the swf file on my server. when i do this then the video does not play. Could you please provide some assistance with how this can be done. I have changed all the code to point to the FLVPlayer.swf as located on my server with no avail.
Thanks in advance for the help.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Hi Josh and Steve C.,
are you using a crossdomain.xml inside the folder where your video flv is?
If not, try uploading an XML crossdomain with the following content;
<cross-domain-policy>
<allow-access-from domain=”*” />
</cross-domain-policy>
does this solve your problem?
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I am having the same problem as Josh and Steve C - works locally but not on a web server. Crossdomain.xml does not work.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I also try generating the html source from your link - did not work.
September 4th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Ah well, another “dead end”…
September 4th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Shaun did you save your “crossdomain.xml” in the root of the server where your flv is?
November 4th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
The player works well, thanks.
I’m trying to use your player on a DVD-ROM to play FLVs. However the program to link it to play requires a runtime perameter. I have no idea what that is or how to obtain it.
Thanks,
Dennis
December 7th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I have tried a lot of variations and I can not get this to work, even by copying your code. It is a large file 42 MB (the .swf file is half this size). Please visit http://www.whiteheadboyd.com/testvideo.html and view the source code. I welcome any suggestions.
December 7th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Hi BM’er,
I think I found your problem. Use proper quotes (”) for your attribute values in your HTML embed code. As a result of your alternative quotes (“,″) the browsers tries to download;
http://www.whiteheadboyd.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://www.platipus.nl/flvplayer/download/1.0/FLVPlayer.swf?video=media/Whitehead-Boyd_Testimonials.flv%E2%80%9D (which doesn’t exist.)
Good luck!
December 8th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Theo, I made the updates you suggested and now I can see the loading icon, but guess what…no video plays still. I was wonder, since macromedia is now adobe, is the codebase still valid? How do you get as classid and codebase info? I’m hoping your eyes are better than mine and see where my problem lies. I appreciate your feedback. View the video again at www.whiteheadboyd.com/testvideo.html.