Any way to upload entire folder?

flash movie needs accomanying files

[Duskrider]

I'm currently working on a little program that will allow different departments within where I work to upload videos (like training videos or safety videos) and then keep track of who watches them. My guess is that I'll do most of the uploading myself, but I wanted to make it such that I can give anyone access to the upload script so they could do it themselves.

Anyway, we (at the office) all agreed that Flash is the best format for security and ease of distribution. We went out and got a program that will allow conversion of video files to flash and also allow them to have a nice table of contents and controls. The biggest problem is that for the TOC and controls to work on the flash videos, the program creates a friggin mess of files that all relate to each other... and this screws up my 'easy' upload idea. There's no way for this program to create a nice single .swf or .fla that has all the controls and TOC built in, at least not that I've found. :(

Is there any way, other than zipping up a directory and writing an unzipper for the server side, to allow a user to specify a directory where the video resides and just up the whole thing intact?

If not, I suppose I'll have to settle for the single .flv file that is created and dump the controls and TOC... though that's part of the reason we bought this converter program. I'm trying to write it in such a way that it will also play mpegs and avi files down the road if that's what the department has, but to start out we're asking that they send us the movie file so we can convert it to flash.

Thanks for any ideas.

[jatar_k]

>> Is there any way, other than zipping up a directory and writing an unzipper for the server side, to allow a user to specify a directory where the video resides and just up the whole thing intact?

not really, the 'select file' dialog that comes up won't work like that, it doesn't allow you to select a dir, so you would have to get around browser functionality.

I'd go with the unzipper

[alexdunae]

Since you're already in aFlash frame of mind, why not use its upload component.

There are also some ready-made options.

The only other alternative is using a java applet (ready-made ones can be purchased) but I've always found this to be a huge pain.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 12:31 am (utc) on Sep. 6, 2007]

[alexdunae]

Following up to my post above, the Flash library you would use is

flash.net.FileReferenceList

- your favourite search engine will have piles of resources.

[jatar_k]

you would still have to upload file by file though, would you not?

[alexdunae]

@jatar_k - nope, you can select multiple files within a folder (much like the standard open dialog in Photoshop). This creates an upload queue within Flash, which processes them one or two at a time until they are all uploaded. The added advantage is that you can see the progress of individual files while they upload.

[jatar_k]

that would work
you could also make a multifile upload form, though it wouldn't necessarily have the progress