Ensuring imported videos play when SWF is played on different PC

[brettr91513903]

I have created an animate file that plays some small imported videos.  The imported videos use the FLVPlayback (SKIN set to none) to play the videos.  The videos are externally located in a file folder named "video"  off the main root directory that contains the FLA and SWF files.  All works well when testing or exporting as a windows projector but nothing appears when using the generated html and / or swf in the browser.

My end goal is to play the presentation on a separate PC and would like to use a browser (files local to separate PC) for display.  Hopefully, this is a simple use error and and easy fix, any suggestions?

[Colin Holgate]

I don't see a way to make that work in a browser. You could either put the files online, or just double-click the SWF. There is a good chance they have Flash Player installed. Using the Projector option in publishing settings also works, that way they won't need Flash Player.

[ClayUUID]

A SWF's root directory is determined differently when running in Flash Player vs in a browser. It's been a while since I had to get hands-on with this issue, but IIRC it's something like that a SWF in a browser sets the containing HTML document location as the root folder, instead of where the SWF itself is.

[brettr91513903]

So Clay and Colin are you saying that the external links using the swf are not possible or would it take some tweeking as to where the video file is located.  Perhaps using a absolute path when its on the final host computer?

[Colin Holgate]

I think that what Clay is referring to would be more of an issue if the HTML and the SWF were in different folders. In this test they're in the same folder. My guess is that it's some sort of security setting issue, the same exact files work fine when posted online.

[brettr91513903]

Colin,

If I use something (actionscript) like this:  (where "player" is an instance of the FLVplayer and "overview" is the video file)

player.source = "video/overview.mp4";

If I export to  swf with an html wrapper and place the html and swf file in the same location with a subfolder named video then the swf should find the video files correct?  or am I missing a key step?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Colin Holgate]

What you described should work, but only works with online files, not with local ones.

[brettr91513903]

Colin,

This won't be actually on the web or on a web server, just a PC using a browser to display.  would I be better off not doing the relative path and just getting an absolute path from the new PC?

[Colin Holgate]

I think that is not likely to work. Generally browser content can't read file paths, otherwise someone could write something that roamed around your hard drive doing bad things.

Is a Projector not an option, or is the SWF part of an overall demo site?

[ClayUUID]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Colin+Holgate  wrote

Generally browser content can't read file paths...

Err...

document.location

img.src

script.src

audio.src

etc...

[Colin Holgate]

I meant arbitrary reading of binary files on your hard drive.

[brettr91513903]

No, a projector is not an option at this point.  My presentation is fitting into a larger one that is browser based.  The person putting it together doesn't want to switch from browser to projector.  Only found this out this week.  That why I am scrambling a bit.

[Colin Holgate]

I'm hoping I'll figure out a way to play the files locally, but while thinking of work-arounds, is having the video online an option, or is it a requirement that the presentation works when there is no Internet?

[brettr91513903]

Colin,

Again, thanks for your help.

The presentation will be shown in a large exhibition space with poor internet connections, so it is preferred to have everything run local.  Not to mention that there will be 3 other presentations that are all being launched from a browser-based GUI.  I have tried to convert the videos to FLVs (to embed) but the output was poor and the file size was large so I am not interested in doing that.  I am preparing a "safe" presentation that runs without the mp4s but would prefer not to loose the impact of the videos.

[Colin Holgate]

Did using FLV solve the file issue? If it did you should make sure about which FLV format you were using. Sorenson Spark is the old, got a bad reputation from early YouTube poor quality, codec. On2 VP6 is a lot better, and if you give it plenty of data rate maybe it would be ok?

Another thing to try is F4V. That's the H.264 wrapper that Adobe made, and it may well have metadata that makes the file issue go away. But I haven't tried that, it may not help.

[brettr91513903]

I found it difficult to find a converter and I could not find one that saved to F4V.  Do you know of any?

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

If you have a CC subscription you can install Flash Pro CS6. That also installs Adobe Media Encoder CS6, and that was the last version that compressed to FLV, if you want to try the On2 VP6 test. It also does export to F4V, which uses H.264.

To find the Flash Pro CS6 installer you need to look in the find other apps section, and choose Previous Versions from the menu on the right.

[brettr91513903]

Interesting, I'll try that.

[ClayUUID]

I finally went back and dug an old project out of the archives that was having this issue. The problem was the player skin, not the video file. With a projector, the skin (MojaveExternalPlaySeekMute.swf in our case) must be in the same folder as the main SWF. With HTML, the skin must be in the same folder as the HTML document.

[Colin Holgate]

Right. Those skins can be tricky, and I too would have brought up that possible issue. In the first message he mentioned skin being set to None, so that's why I hadn't talked about that.

[brettr91513903]

Clay,

Perhaps I'll select a skin and try what you suggested.

Thanks,