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More player controls for .swf files: << and >> buttons possible?

A question/suggestion: would it be possible to add a "(fast)forward" and "(fast)backward" buttons to the "player controls" that one can add to a .sfw file? This would make it possible to go back and forth in longer .swf videos (now you can only pause/stop it, and restart from the beginning.)
Thanks,
Stef

Comments

  • ...and some kind of slider, so it would be possible to "drag" to a certain position in the movie?
  • edited March 2013
    You may want to use a different program to build the player with. Adobe actually has a free player designer at their site.

    The stand-alone "Strobe" player:

    http://www.osmf.org/strobe_mediaplayback.html

    The player from their servers with a player-designer (you can modify its code output to use with Strobe):

    Flash Media Playback: https://www.adobe.com/products/flash-media-playback.html

    Player designer: http://www.osmf.org/configurator/fmp/

    Let me know if that helps you. Of course, you can combine this code with the code generated by our program as well once you understand how the parameters are entered.

    Terry
  • hmm... I have the feeling that with the links you gave, I can produce solutions for creating html (to use in webpages). Or am I wrong? Can I use these sites to generate a .swf file, where the video is made by camstudio-producer, but with "better" control buttons? I'm affraid my knowledge of flash isn't good enough to see how to do that, sorry....
    I don't want to produce html-code, because I want to use those .swf videos directly in Powerpoint presentations, avoiding to use a web browser to show the html...
    The reason is that, if I use .swf into powerpoint, I can control the size of the video pixel-wise, so that I'm absolutely sure there is no scaling - just to preserve the excellent quality of the camstudio-swf-files, and the very small size of those .swf files.
  • edited March 2013
    Yes, all the display options are part of the HTML page - they are not built into the SWF file. You need a player - CamStudio makes a player for you, but it is quite rudimentary.

    The buttons in PowerPoint come from PowerPoint's internal player, from my understanding. But those may also be customizable if you dig deep into the preferences. Those links likely show you the options and parameters, as those are Flash parameters used by any Flash player that communicate with the player's code.

    Terry
  • hmmm... how comes that, when I just open the .swf file (not the html file) in a browser or a standalone flash player, I can see those controls also? And these controls look exactly the same as the controls I see when played the .swf file in powerpoint?
    I really was under the impression those controls are added into the .swf itself, not by the html code nor powerpoint... Now I'm confused :-)
  • edited March 2013
    Ever remember installing flash? That's what plays 'em.

    With the controls, you can make the default flash player that installs with flash even better.

    Terry
  • OK, I rejected the whole idea of playing the .swf videos in powerpoint itself. I want to switch to placing hyperlinks in my powerpoints, so a web browser would open the swf-videos. But: when I try to test the above mentioned Flash Media Player via http://www.osmf.org/configurator/fmp/ (and I test it with this swf file: "http://home.scarlet.be/stef.pillaert/testbystef.swf"), I seem to have two problems that I can't solve right now:
    *when I play this movie, made with camstudio, and converted with producer to swf (without controls), it somehow doesn't work via the Flash Media Playback: the configurator site tries to load the movie, but it stops, and no "play button" is visible... What am I doing wrong? If I open the URL of my file right away in a browser, I can play it by right-clicking->play - but quality is bad, because of the scaling problem mentioned earlier... Somehow, the Flash Media Playback seems to have some problem with this file, no? I allready tried to change the size to the "right" size, and also tried to set scaling to "off"... I also tried different browsers (Chrome and IE), no luck...
    *can this Flash Media Playback be used to play local files on a PC? I'd rather not put my videos on the web, so someone "offline" can watch the videos? Or is this impossible this way?
    Sorry for all the trouble,
    Stef
  • edited March 2013
    Strobe is the standalone player - Flash Media Playback requires the viewer to be online so it can download the player from the 'net. However, the video does not have to be on the 'net - it can reside anywhere. (CD/DVD/Hard Drive)

    I had a problem once with YouTube delivering videos where it kept re-sizing in 10-pixel increments, so I had to fiddle a bit to stop that from happening. These players may be doing something similar. BTW - it was a CSS padding setting on the p tag that was haunting me... make sure all four directions are set to zero - you may need to explicitly assign a class to manually applied p tags, such as p class="nopadding" with CSS p.nopadding {padding:0 0 0 0;}

    You CAN use YouTube in the "unlisted" mode and share videos with only specific people, but the downside is that those people can then share the URL. The "private" mode is impractical since it only works for a limited number of specified people (20, I think).

    I'm not an expert in either Strobe nor Flash Media Playback - I did some playing around in a sandbox site with them a year ago when I discovered them, but since I deliver my videos via YouTube it wasn't useful to me at that time. Now that I'm serving up some private content streamed from a Moodle account, it is becoming more interesting to use Strobe (to stay with an open-source solution), so I'm very interested in what you discover! Please do share whatever you find out.

    Terry
  • I found a standalone flash player on www.eolsoft.com (named Flash Movie Player) . This player seems promising, since I seem to be able to prevent scaling. I'll test it somewhat, and if everythings turn out to work fine, I'll advise my students to install this player, so they can watch the videos offline, without the scaling problem.
    This way, I keep the benefits of the .swf files made by Camstudio (great quality if no scaling, and small size), and the students don't have to be online. The only drawback is, that the students will be switching back and forth between the powerpoint and the videos, making the "show" less smooth...
  • Let me know how using that player goes. Too bad about PowerPoint's player being less than it could be.

    Terry
  • edited March 2013
    If you have time, take a look at these search results and see if any of this stuff helps:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=better+swf+player+for+powerpoint

    Terry
  • Thanks for this, most of these sites I recognise ;-) These sites explain how to embed 'the normal way' (so: no possibility to add those player controls...)
    As for the eolsoft flash player: this seems to do the job very well! I'll advise my students to install this player.
    Thanks for all your time!
    Stef
  • Stef,

    You are very welcome!

    Terry
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