The Flash Video Jukebox, XML Style
October 2, 2004
Update (Oct 2007) A lot of time has passed since this post, and in that time the original FLA has been lost. No worries though, as SlideShowPro now handles FLVs in a much more elegant way. Check it out.
Recently a question was posted at ChurchMedia.net about a flash application that would allow the user to select from several videos within one interface. I recently completed a similar project over at ccsb.ca called the video vault, and provided the source file to the folks at CMN. I quickly realized two things...
1) Not everyone has Flash, not to mention the newest version which is required to work with the source file. This excluded many people right from the start.
2) Even if they have Flash MX 2004, they would need a good understanding of Actionscript, which is not a given, to make changes for their specific application.
So I decided to use the new XML capabilities in Flash to make an easy to use template for users to quickly churn out a simple flash video player. Now, all you need is a text editor to edit a simple XML file and your videos encoded to flv or swf(won't work with swfs) (Make sure they are sized to 320 x 240).
Here is an example. The following is customizable:
- The list of videos
- The background color of the movie
- Optionally, you can load in a background image as well (I have included a PSD template in the ZIP that shows exactly where the elements lay so that you can design around them)
- The text at the bottom of the movie, including its' color and alignment
- A text shadow property (for the footer text) with the ability to set the color of the shadow and the x and y offsets
- Whether the numbers in the list are shown or not
All you have to do is download the zip file below, unzip it and follow the instructions inside. It's pretty simple, but if you have questions, feel free to leave them here.
Filed under Design, Technology
Comments
Brad Daily says:
Aram - After looking over it, it appears that this won't work with swfs, only with flvs or mp3s. The media component used seems to only accept those two formats
Comments are closed for this entry
Aram T says:
Very nice - just what I was looking for. But I can't get it to work with swfs, only flvs. Any idea why?