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  • RichFLV – Apollo app updated

    This is the biggest update to RichFLV since it`s release.

    Download RichFLV (Rename extension to .air if it downloads as a zip file)
    Download Apollo Runtime (Alpha Version)

    Here is a brief description what has been changed.

    Performance:
    The biggest improvement is the performance boost. This version should analyse flvs up to 10 times faster than the old version.
    I was able to analyse a 140Mb file also i would not recommend this but files up to 80 Mb should be ok.
    The biggest problem currently is the memory consumption. With the 140Mb file my RAM could easily eat up 1GB. I will look into that for a next update.
    One thing i will also invastigate is to change the analysis of the flv when it`s loaded. Maybe it would make more sense to do the major part of the analysis when the file is saved.
    This will keep memory usage low while working on the file and the import would be much faster but than it will take longer to save changes.

    Progress Information:
    I finally found a way to add a progress bar while importing a flv file. I was motivated to do this by the book “The Laws Of Simplicity” by John Maeda.
    I can really recommend this book! The progress information is given in two chunks. First it shows how much of the file has been read and than it shows you how much of the flv has been analysed.
    While analysing the flv it will also output how many tags of the different kinds (Video, Sound, Metadata) it has found.
    Progress

    New Improved Timeline:

    The timeline is now more compact and easier to handle (i hope!?). I`ve build custom components for the sliders because i was not happy with the Slider component.
    The keyframe and cutter handling should be much more precise now.

    Timeline

    Export Still Image As Jpeg:
    I`ve added the ability to export still images from the video player. They will be saved as jpeg files at the moment. Later i will add different formats (PNG,BMP).
    In the options menu you have the ability to change the quality settings for the jpegs.

    jpegExport.jpg

    Improved Layout Handling:

    You can now hide the info panel and the timeline panel and get different views of the editor.
    layout.jpg

    More Options

    I`ve included an option to set the aspect ration handling of the video and one for creating new cuepoints at the current timestamp of the video.
    options.jpg

    Chrome changed
    I have changed the chrome settings from a custom chrome with transparency to the standard chrome because of performance issues.
    Espacially when you had the application in fullscreen mode the app became quite sluggish. Now with the standard chrome it behaves much better.
    I haven`t noticed a big performance hit with transparency in other apps i`ve build with apollo but when it comes to video this definetely has a huge impact.
    Will see if that improves i the upcoming beta of apollo.

    Please give comments if you like the changes, have suggestions or bug reports.

    Download RichFLV (Rename extension to .air if it downloads as a zip file)
    Download Apollo Runtime (Alpha Version)

  • RichFLV – Fixed XML import

    Here is a quick update to RichFLV`s xml import/export capabilities (see post here).
    There was a small bug that prevented the exported xml files to be imported again. That`s fixed now.

    I know there are still some quirks with the keyframe timeline (sometimes doesn`t update correctly when resized…) but that will be fixed after the OFFF.
    Get RichFLV Alpha 2.1 here.

    !!! New Version Available See This Post !!!

  • RichFLV Updated

    I couldn`t resist to rush out a new version (alpha 2.0) of RichFLV that adds some nice features.
    I will be of to OFFF in Barcelona tomorrow and so i will not be able to work on this for a couple of days.
    All this stuff is not tested in depth but seems to work fine. New features are:

    – Keyframe visualisation:
    Timeline_RichFLV

    The timeline is extended to show were keyframes are located. This is important to see were it makes sense to cut the flv.

    – Keyframe precise cutting
    If you drag the thumbs for cutting the flv they will automatically adjust to the timestamp of the nearest keyframe in the flv.
    Before this it was possible to cut a flv even on intra frames which makes no sense (or does it?). Maybe i will make it an option to allow cutting again on videoframes that are no keyframes.

    – Selecting Keyframes via Keyframe Datagrid:

    KeyframeDataGrid

    If you select a keyframe in the datagrid the playhead will be set to that position in the flv.

    – Export/Import Cuepoint Data with the FLVCoreCuepoints Format

    Export
    You can now export/import cuepoint in the new Adobe FLVCoreCuepoints xml-format. This makes it easy to save settings and apply them to different flvs.

    – Finally fixed the Google/Youtube onMetadata Bug

    The problem with importing youtube flvs should be solved now. Everyone who had problems with that could you confirm that?

    Again all this has not been tested in depths so this is kind of an experimental update.

    Download it here: RichFLV_alpha2.0 !!! New Version Available See This Post !!!
    BTW: If any Flex people are at OFFF and want to meet for a chat let my know.

  • Downloading Youtube FLVs – legal or not?

    I`m still considering releasing my RichTube – Youtube Apollo tool to search, watch, download and organize youtube videos.
    You can watch a screencast here. The more i think about their Terms Of Use i think that they are just wrong saying donwloading is not allowed because they are a streaming service.
    What is the difference beetween progressively downloading videos to the users cache (what they call streaming) and downloading them elsewhere?
    Here is an interesting statement from youtube: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/15/huh-youtube-sends-techcrunch-a-cease-desist/

    What is your opinion on this?

    BTW: cool updates for RichFLV are on the way. Quite busy at the moment may take till end of next week.

  • First Papervision Experiment – Coverflow

    Finally i found the time to check out Papervision3D. It`s really fun!
    Here is the result of my first experiment. You can flip through the covers by using the slider.
    Thanks to Jens Franke for motivating me to finally check out P3D.
    It`s a bit rough right now but i will release the sources as soon as i cleaned up the code 😉

  • Artemis Alpha released

    This is what i`ve been waiting for: http://artemis.effectiveui.com/
    If now only adobe would implement a smooth way too bootstrap the server. I really think adobe should implement some way of communication with external apps. I`m sure they won`t support extensions via Dll`s or something but a simple command line interface would open up endless possibilities. I know they want to keep things cross-os but i think it`s worse if we end up with different hacks that disturb the user experience like lauching two apps (server+apollo app) . There must be a smooth way to bootstrap those apps. But so far cudos to effectiveui for their efforts.

  • RichFLV minor update

    A comment from James pointed me to a small bug that made it impossible to parse flvs from youtube.
    Youtube has flvs that miss the first onMetadata Tag. I think they use ffmpeg at their backend to convert to flv.
    I made a quick fix and now RichFLV will just ignore the onMetadata if it`s missing. In the next version RichFLV will generate the missing onMetadataTag.

    !!! New Version Available See This Post !!!

  • Save file dialog with apollo hack

    One thing that is currently missing from the Apollo Filesystem-API is the ability to get a native save file dialog.
    It`s easy to create a file open dialog with the open()-Method of the File Object. So until the File Object gets a save() method i use the download()-Method.
    The File class extends FileReference and so inherits its download()-Method. The problem is that the download Method takes a URLRequest Object as a parameter.
    So after the OPEN event make sure to cancel the download request with file.cancel(). Now you can access the url via the normal File attributes.
    Here is some example code:

    private function saveFile():void
    {
    file=new File();
    file.download(new URLRequest(“http://www.nourl.de”),”exported.swf”);
    file.addEventListener(Event.OPEN,swfSavePathSelected);
    file.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR,savePathSelected);
    }

    private function savePathSelected(evt:Event) : void
    {
    file.cancel();
    fileStream = new FileStream();
    fileStream.openAsync(file, FileMode.WRITE);
    fileStream.writeBytes(b);
    fileStream.close()
    }

    This worked great for me in earlier projects. At some point i got some errors which seem to be related to the nonexisting url and the app would just hang. In order to avoid this
    i did an quich and ugly hack. I also added an event listener for the IO_ERROR event and did all the saving stuff their. Not nice but temporarily fixed it. I got confirmation that
    the missing save()-method will be somehow implemented in later builds, so i can live with this hack in the meantime.
    Anyone got a better solution?

    UPDATE:
    Found this post by Robots w/Lasers that has more about this

  • Screenshot of Flash CS3

    Dont`t know if it`s old news but here is a screenshot of flash cs3 at amazon

  • RichFLV – Apollo FLV Editing Tool

    RichFlv can:

    • Read flv Metadata
    • read/edit/modify/delete cuepoints
    • cut flvs
    • convert the sound of the flv to mp3
    • convert flv to swf

    The API i developed for RichFLV implements most of the FLV file specificaton and some parts of the SWF file specification in Actionscript.
    It`s all done with pure Actionscript (Byte Array Baby!) so no external tools are used. The cool thing is that the only thing that depends on the apollo framework is the part were RichFlv actually saves the files to your desktop (FileStream.writeBytes()). The same could be done as a none apollo app in the browser and than send to the server. Imagine this as an extension to popular video sites. It would enable real flv remixing in the clients browser!

    RichFlv is currently an alpha release so expect some limitations and bugs. Current known issues are:

    • All flvs will be saved with a framerate of 25/s
    • Exported SWF will only contain the Video information (no audio)
    • Cuepoint Timeline does not scale properly if application is resized
    • overall handling and accuracy needs improvements
    • I would not use files bigger than 30 mb.
    • …

    These problems will be corrected until RichFlv reaches 1.0 status.
    Future versions will have the ability to mix several flv together to one file. I have this all ready but need more time on the UI.

    Download RichFLV Alpha 1

    Updated to Alpha 2.0: See post here.


    !!! New Version Available See This Post !!!

    Watch a quick introduction Video here.

    (Again it`s an alpha release – use on your own risk)
    Here are some Screenshots:

    Cue Point Editor

    CuePoint Timeline

    Cutting Slider

    I`m always interested in your comments, bugs and suggestions. Post them here or write directly to: info@richapps.de