FLV Player Prototype

All necessary research has been done in order to build FLV Player Prototype tomorrow. The new Flash 8 Professional includes a new component, FLVPlayback, that is a complete FLV player template. Only thing it needs is an URL to the FLV-file it has to play. The visual template is easy to customize in order to integrate the GNG design.

In order to make the player more flexible, we will have to create a way to send FLV-files to the player dynamically. This will be done using a combination of a database, ASP and FlashVars. The reason to do this is that we want end-users to be able to add new FLV-videos without having any knowledge of Flash. This is essential to the usability of the backend.

We will then use the ASP to create a FlashVar for the player that contains the URL to the FLV-file it has to play. Instead of hardcoding a FLV URL in Flash, the FlashVar will be used. This might require a bit of ActionScripting but shouldn't be that hard to do. Explained in another way, it will work like this:

1. The user uploads an FLV-video to the server and types the URL in a text box.
2. The URL is stored in a database along with other info about the video.
3. When a visitor wants to see a video, ASP is used to build a page where we pull the correct URL from the database and put it in a FlashVar for the Flash Player.
4. The Flash Player will read the FlashVar that was created on the page and play the URL it has been given.

Not all elements will be used in the first prototype as they are not necessary to make a quick test of the system. Tomorrow we will see how the first test works out!