FLASH FLV PLAYER / EXTERNAL FILES?

Hey all,

So I made a flash video player, with a custom skin. I exported it, and it works the video plays; looks great.

Now what I want to do, since I am doing it for a client, is use the video player as a template and allow for the path to the .flv file to be changed via HTML , so they can upload new .flv files to their server and use the same video player to play the videos.

Does anyone know how to do this?

So essentially (i guess) there would be videoPlayer.swf and then somehow with the HTML link to (for instance) video1.flv allowing the client to then use the same code but substitute video2.flv to show a different video…

Thanks!

You’re probably looking for something such as the “flashvars” feature. This is an optional parameter of the Flash object that allows you to pass variables into the flash animation. Typically, developers will write their Flash object with Javascript, and so it is quite easy to pass along Javascript variables into the Flash animation.

Basically, you could define a variable called “myFLVFile” and set it to the file that you want to play. When your Flash animation starts, it will discover that it already has a variable called “myFLVFile” set and ready to go.

Just google the term “flashvars” to find examples and resources about the feature.

Yes, I am avoiding JavaScript because I am opening the HTML containing the video in a LightBox style using javascript, and when using javascript to insert the video, it does not appear (even though it works when just pulling up the HTML file containing the video without using the lightbox feature).

However I do think that the javascript “error” (i guess i can call it that) can be fixed if the javascript declaring the video is established BEFORE the lightbox functions run, then it would know it was there and display it… But i am not very fluent in javascript so I cannot say for sure… I’m starting to think of moving away from the lightbox style pop up and onto something else… any ideas?

I’m not very good with flash either, i’m still a learning web developer and my strong points are CSS .

I found an open source flash player, OS FLV , and it works alright so far, I guess i just have to see how it integrates into the site.

if you want to check it out, you can here… it’s in a very rough rough and unstable state, but feel free to browse around.

http://www.estout.net/corydavis/american_flash.html (flash page and video pop up)

http://www.estout.net/corydavis/ website in whole (pop ups may not work and may have some bugs.)