Help: Adobe Flash and Flash Video Forum

Re: Big Trouble with shifting IK pivots in F! CS4

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:31:18 GMT

by Chris Georgenes.

Yup, the IK tool in Flash still needs work and Adobe knows this. For some reason there are politics involved when it comes to what features get updated and which ones do not. Long story but I am working directly with the Flash team to get some of these features fixed/improved by CS6. Sorry, wish I had better news. Pinning is on the top of my list as is Layer Parenting. Fingers crossed.

Re: Big Trouble with shifting IK pivots in F! CS4

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:16:52 GMT

by R Blank.

Just wanted to say that Chris touches on this issue (but, unfortunately, does not have any magic work-arounds) in his new course, 'Tweening with Chris Georgenes', posted yesterday, at http://www.richmediainstitute.com/catalog.php?item=80

It's 45 minutes of insight into the motion tweening process from someone who has a ton of experience in it, and running for an introductory sales price of $1.99.

Share and enjoy!

-r

Re: Big Trouble with shifting IK pivots in F! CS4

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:22:54 GMT

by R Blank.

Heya Morf:

If I read you correctly, you're talking about the same thing that Chris Georgenes was mentioning to me when we chatted at FITC Amsterdam. That is, you can't 'pin' parts of your IK skeleton (such as a foot planted on the floor in a walk cycle), which leads to the 'float' issue.

And, if I am reading you properly, then you will be a tad unsatisfied to note that this issue has not been address in CS5. You might take a moment to post your thoughts in a note to the Flash IDE team at Adobe.

-r

Big Trouble with shifting IK pivots in F! CS4

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:24:38 GMT

by < Morf />.

After weeks of using armatures and trying every work-around I can dream up, I've given up on using CS4's IK/Bones system. Problem: As you add poses or transformations, the pivots (where the bones control symbol shapes) shift - ever-so slightly, but they shift. Trying to build a walking rig with articulated body parts that don't "float around" is impossible. (I'll post an example if requested)

Having successfully constructed and animated several rigs employing a much-clunkier process in CS3, I was looking forward to what Adobe promised - but I've gone back to CS3's non-armature method. And as an instructor, there's no way I would saddle my students with CS4's Armatures.

I've been cruising the forums this afternoon to see if anyone else has noticed this problem with CS4's new IK system. I've found several posts with folks frustrated in the same way, but no solutions offered.

Anybody with solutions? Or just want to commiserate?

Re: Captions, ActionScript cue points and seek bar?

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:05:05 GMT

by R Blank.

Hello Douglas:

I'm heading out of the office to pack for Amsterdam and realized I hadn't replied to your post.

Just as 'cue points' and 'captions' are two different things, that exploit two separate mechanisms inside of Flash, so are 'AS cue points' and different from 'baked-in cue points' -- and that explains the different behaviors of each.

In my experience, AS cue points do not perform as elegantly as baked-in cue points. But, I've only ever worked with AS cue points using the FLVPlayback component, and never with a hand-coded player.

So, yes, it is possible to write your own custom AS cue point handler code if you play video directly over the NetStream instead of with the components. But, it's not simple, which is why many people prefer to use the components in these instances. If you choose to go down that path, you could have your player respond however you wished -- such as, to cite your example, automatically re-synching on the end of a seek operation.

Good luck!

-r

Re: Lesson 7 in Flash CS4 Fundamentals: ActionScript

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:56:48 GMT

by R Blank.

Hello Diana:

That issue has been fixed, and one of our support techs has emailed you a $10 voucher for finding and locating a bug.

Thank you,

-r

Lesson 7 in Flash CS4 Fundamentals: ActionScript

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:59:04 GMT

by Diana Urena.

Hi!

I'm looking for help since the video for the lesson 7 is not loading, I already tried to restart my explorer, and to even restart the pc, but it is still not working.

Any help will be welcome!

Thanks!

Captions, ActionScript cue points and seek bar?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:50:22 GMT

by Douglas Lambert.

First of all I want to thank you for the free tutorials you made available. They've been extremely helpful.

In "AS3 for Flash Video - Cue Points" your sample file shows the captions synching up nicely as you drag the seek bar using embedded cue points.

In "Special Topics Flash Video" your sample files for "Adding Cue Points with AS" and "Closed Captioning System" also include a seek bar but after scrubbing the captions don't synch up until the video plays to the next cue point time.

Is there any way to synch up Actionscript cue points immediately when the scrub finishes? Also, is there any way to use Actionscript cue points with NetStream or do they absolutely only work with the FLVPlayback and VideoPlayer components?

thanks again,
D Lambert

OSMF Training Update

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:07:15 GMT

by R Blank.

For those of you who viewed my course on building progressive video players with the Adobe Open Source Media Framework, you may have noticed that, in the time since the course was written for OSMF Sprit 5, the code I included in that course no longer works with the current OSMF version (Sprint 9).

So, I updated the final project file (the finished video player) for the Sprint 9 framework, and Adobe has just posted the update.

If you're interested in seeing the changes required to make a video player work with OSMF Sprint 9, check it out:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/video_osmf.html

Share and enjoy!

-r

Re: When will Essential Papervision 3D be fully available?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:49:04 GMT

by R Blank.

Hello Lionel:

If the enrollment expires without the course being complete, then we will refund the enrollment cost. And yes, we will extend the enrollment to ensure you have a full 90 days after the course is completed.

Does this answer your questions?

thx,

-r

When will Essential Papervision 3D be fully available?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:01:38 GMT

by Lionel Low.

Any hint as to when this course will be fully done?

As mentioned on the site, the course will be available for 365 days since it is a rough cut version.

Can the admin kindly explain what happens when:
1) 365 days of enrollment has ended and the course is still yet fully available?
2) When the course is fully available, will whatever time balance that I have left (be it more or less than 90 days), be converted to 90 days?

Many thanks in advance for taking the time to answer these questions.

Re: OSMF FULL_SCREEN

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:49:22 GMT

by R Blank.

I replied to Mike off-forum, and then realized I should post that response here, too.

I told Mike that, while you can work with full screen with OSMF, you don't need to -- because full screen isn't a property of your video or your media player, but instead of Flash itself. That is, when you enter full screen mode, you're telling the Flash Player instance to enter into full screen.

And, the code to do that is super simple:
stage.displayState = 'fullScreen';

and exiting is:
stage.displayState = "normal";

The catch comes because of how stage works in AS3. The 'stage' property is like an alias, or a shortcut, to the stage -- so in AS3 you never actually talk directly to the stage, but through an alias. Trick is that the alias only exists on display objects in the display list. If you don't understand that, another way of saying it is that "sometimes 'stage' doesn't exist".

So, to be safe, you should implement code such as:

if ( stage )
{
stage.displayState = "fullScreen";
}

In that example, we first check to see if stage exists, and then tell it to enter full screen mode. This way, it won't error if stage doesn't exist.

For more information on handling full-screen state, hardware acceleration, and stage layout alteration, check out 'AS3 for Video in Flash' @
http://www.richmediainstitute.com/catalog.php?item=17

And for more information on the nature of the stage and how we talk to it, check out 'Practical AS3' @
http://www.richmediainstitute.com/catalog.php?item=8

Good luck!

-r

Re: directshow flash encoding

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:42:59 GMT

by R Blank.

Howdy Bill:

First, apologies for the delay in replying. I've been so engaged in work on the RMI site, that I missed your posting.

There are tools that take live inputs to generate FLV, but that's not what you're asking.

The only tool that I know of that does exactly what you're asking, in the consumer price range, is Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, which you can see here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder

This allows you to encode a live input and publish to a live stream on a Flash Media Server installation.

Good luck!

-r

OSMF FULL_SCREEN

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:17:20 GMT

by Michael Fletcher.

Hi

I'm trying to create a new video player in OSMF for our website. I cannot find any information on how to invoke FULL_SCREEN mode. I've been working with R's examples on how to build a progressive video player and the lessons on streaming video player, too. Very helpful in getting me started and familiar with OSMF.

I just have two pieces left, a window showing an embed code, and a full screen button. I am really struggling with figuring out how to set the stage to full screen. I've read the article about how to do it in AIR (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/527042?tstart=0), but I don't know enough on how to convert a call to "stage" or "window.stage" to the correct object in my OSMF player for the web.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Kindest Regards,
Mike

directshow flash encoding

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:39:42 GMT

by William Eckard.

I have a direct show filter graph that is extracting video from a commercial video survalance system.

Currently, the video graph outputs to a windows media player window. I would like to encode it as flash, possably using a filter graph in direct show, and send it to flash media server, without first saving it as a file etc.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Bill

New OSMF Training Posted

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:05:53 GMT

by R Blank.

We've completed a new course on the Open Source Media Framework for Adobe.

This course is 35 minutes and illustrates, clearly and quickly, how to build multi-bitrate streaming players with OSMF and Flash in just minutes. The code is really powerful and easy.

The course is free and available on the Adobe Developer Connection @ http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/video_osmf_streaming.html.

For reference, the previous installment in the series on OSMF, on building progressive video players, can be found here @ http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/video_osmf.html.

-r

Welcome!

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:17:07 GMT

by R Blank.

As explained in this initial post the RMI is very pleased to launch a set of new publicly accessible forums on a wide range of topics, mirroring the focus of our course offerings.

This forum is dedicated to questions about and support for working with Adobe Flash. So, if you have any issues, concerns or questions about your experience with this tool, or just need some general assistance with Flash, please post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Share and enjoy!

-r