How to display a .swf video?

With play/pause type player, on a webpage

[DanielGardner]

Hello and thank you for having a forum for this kind of support.

My situation is thus: I have quite a number of one-hour WMV files of church preaching. I would like to make these available for watching at my father's domain. After researching, I see the flash format would fit my needs, but not having the Flash programs itself, I used a roundabout way to convert the WMV files to AVI and then those to .flv using the free Riva encoder. (Riva can't convert WMV version 9, hence the convert to AVI.) I then found code to call a flvplayer.swf and embed the flv in my web page, all very nicely. The flv plays in a simple player, giving play/pause control to the audience.

However, I thought perhaps my job was getting easier when I purchased the AVS Video Tools package, as it permits direct conversion of any video file to the .swf format.

And this is where I ran into a dead end. My knowledge of how flash works is just now begining, and I have NO idea how to display this .swf file on my webpage. I need it to show up in a player with play/pause control, but in my searches all across the internet, I have found no such way.

If someone sees where I am messing up, please illuminate me. I'm a noob in this whole flash media stuff, but hope to learn from you all. If you have ANY advice, please wack me along side the head with it.

Thanks for reading!

Daniel

[jay5r]

You'll need to program the player controls into the swf, or better yet, use a generic swf movie which acts as a container/controller for the other swf files (the page would call the container and the container would call the swf movies that you've had converted). It's pretty basic stuff - anyone who's versed in Flash can do what I'm talking about...

[DanielGardner]

Thank you for the reply.

I'm not versed in Flash (don't even have the program itself) but I'm willing to learn how to do this.

To program these controls "into the swf" I would need either the Flash program or the program called Swish, correct? Does the same go for creating a generic swf movie? Or could I perhaps just open up a file in a text editor and code it from there? (Sounds noobish even to me. :^) )

In your opinion, do you believe in my case - what with the hour long videos - my most bandwidth eficient option is to stick with .flv?

Thanks!

[jay5r]

Flash is not a simple program to get your mind around. Personally, I'd hire someone to do the work. It shouldn't take them all that long to do.

[DanielGardner]

Thanks again jayr5 for the input.

[garann]

I've been writing my own Flash video player, which takes a URL to an FLV file as a parameter when it opens, and in the process I've run into lots of people with similar players. I'd think some must be available for download and use? I'd search for "flv player" or "flash video player" and see if you can find one that will take a URL.

If not, Flash 8 provides a lot of tools for controlling video, but it might be a lot to jump into. On the other hand, everyone and their brother seems to be doing this right now, so tutorials abound. :)

[DanielGardner]

Garann, are you speaking of a player that plays .flv only? I have one the flvplayer (here's what I mean: [obreiroaprovado.com...]

Is there the ability for a flv player to also play a .swf file /just/ as easily?

Thank you!

[garann]

Oh I'm sorry, I misunderstood the question. Because SWF is loaded differently than FLV, I think you'd certainly need a different player. Surely some must exist, but I don't know where... Out of curiosity, why are you converting to SWF if it's not giving you controls or other features and you already have the tools to convert to FLV?

[DanielGardner]

Garann, thanks for the info. The only player I have found since the posting to this thread is the WimpyPlayer, which isn't free, but at least it plays both .flv and .swf.

To answer your question, I haven't quite started converting to .swf. The reason I would /like/ to convert to .swf is because this program I have (AVS video tools) converts any file directly to swf, (but does not convert to flv.) The only way I can convert to flv is to use Riva's Free Encoder, and as of yet it doesn't support WM version 9 - which is the format all my vids are in. So, the process to convert to .flv takes much longer because I first convert the WMVs to AVI using AVS and then convert the AVI to flv using Riva.

It would be much easier if I could just use the SWF that my converter creates.

Thanks for your time!

[garann]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. Now have to go find out if the encoder I'm using - ffmpeg - supports Windows Media 9. :)