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Got my Flash-based video to play, hurray!

My last post detailed the frustration I experienced in trying to add a simple movie clip to the web site. Most of that frustration was due to the time I spent trying to get Macromedia’s new flash-based movie technology working well enough that other people could see the video, and not just me. Well, I finally got it working, but I’m not sure how.

As I was writing that last post, I tried again to generate a Flash movie that would play on computers that did not have Macromedia Studio 8 installed. At the end of the day it still didn’t work, and I was noticing weird behavior, in that the final SWF file would play on my laptop when it was in the folder where it was “published” to from Flash 8, but not after I copied it to another folder on the same drive!

There was another clue, however, that I did not pay much attention to at first: the file size of the Flash FLA document was considerably smaller than the previous versions of the document I had created a few days ago, even though they all had only the one movie FLV file in them. It seemed like the FLA document no longer included the actual movie, so it must be referencing it externally, which would explain why the movie would not play when it was in a different folder. Ok, the file sizes don’t bear that out: 376 Kb vs 208 Kb for the FLAs does not equal a 2.3 Mb FLV file.

Whatever the case, to test this theory I copied the FLV file to the same folder I where I was putting the SWF file. Lo and behold, it now played! Was is even more puzzling is that both versions of the SWF file, with an internal and external movie reference, are the same size at 35 Kb.

I uploaded all the files to the web site, created a new test page, and verified that it played over the internet on the other computers in the house. I tried it at work, and it played there too. It was fixed.

I suppose it’s possible the FVL movie file was always externally referenced by the SWF, so that the 35 Kb size is only for the player. But remember, this movie played on my laptop from the web site over the internet, before I had uploaded the FLV file. It also played on my local (laptop) version of the web site, again without the FLV file in the folder that had the SWF file. So, how did that work, and why did it stop working, forcing me to upload the FLV? Undoubtedly I changed a setting somewhere when I was tinkering with it trying to make it work. I wish I knew which one it was.

One difference is that for the first attempts, I used Windows Explorer to drag the FLV file from where it was created to the Flash 8 application window. For the last version, I used the File/Import menu to import the video. However, both of these methods activated the same Video Import Wizard, so I don’t think that made a difference.

Ah! I just figured it out! In the non-working flash document, the “contentPath” for the imported video was a full path and file name pointing to another directory, while in the working version, the same parameter just listed the file name! So, the FLV movie was externally referenced, and it needs to be a relative path from the SWF file, preferably in the same folder, otherwise it won’t find it when you upload it to a server. Man, I wish Macromedia would have been a little clearer on that. I suppose in the end this was a bonehead rookie mistake on my part, since I didn’t even find anyone else with this problem in the forums. This also explains why the movie played over the internet on my laptop, because it was looking for and finding the content on my hard drive! Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, the low-footprint, Flash-based version of the video is now available and should work for everyone who has Flash Player 8 or higher. I just hope I haven’t overhyped this short clip by talking about it so much. It’s really just a small sample of the goings-on at Eeyore’s Birthday this year, just something I wanted to share. Enjoy!