Monthly Archives: July 2007

E4X: Watch Your Namespace…

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When using the new XML object in ActionScript 3 and parsing the data with E4X, if your XML data has a “xmlns” attribute- you may have a difficult time getting any accessible data out of it. The infuriating thing is that the process will fail silently without throwing any errors, returning null, undefined, or anything else…

The way around this is to explicitly let Flash know what namespace you are intending to use:

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namespace xspf = "http://xspf.org/ns/0/";
use namespace xspf;

In this case, I am importing XSPF playlist data for an audio project.

DUVAGAII PDF Presentation

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One thing which is really unfortunate (but necessary) about the DUVAGA project is that all major functionality is not available to the public. We have developed some really nice tools and a good workflow but no one outside of a class setting has access to any of these materials due to copyright restrictions.

Back in June, we put together a short, written overview of the system for the VRA Bulletin. Since we are also lacking in basic instructional overviews for users, I applied some screen captures of the various features along with text from the bulletin in a PDF document.

Red5: Nice Alternative to Flash Media Server

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I’ve put off experimenting with Red5 until today as I’m quite happy with Adobe’s solution (Flash Media Server) and Red5 is still deep in beta-land at the time of this writing.

I was able to install the server on Windows Vista and had a custom FLV stream piggybacked in a preconfigured sample application directory running in about 40 minutes. The structure is not entirely different from FMS, but is drastic enough to cause me a bit of confusion. For example, with FMS applications, you have an application directory within which are normally a “main.asc” file to configure the app, and a “streams” folder which contains any media content. With Red5, it seems there is a bit more to it: a variety of different files/filetypes to configure and very little documentation on how to start a simple video stream from scratch. In fact, I could not get anything going myself, and had to resort to a piggyback approach using a preconfigured application directory.

Aside from the initial confusion, I do see Red5 as a great product and attribute most of my difficulties to differences in the FMS framework. I’ll probably continue to experiment with the current release but am hoping for better documentation in the future. When this server reaches 1.0, I would love to give it another shot!

Juggling RTMP Stream Data Via Proxy

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I’m working on a way to proxy stream data from Flash Media Server to client applications on separate domains. There should be a simple mechanism in place to take care of such security restrictions, but since there is not, my plan is to create a proxy SWF that lives on the same domain as FMS and deals with the collection of BitmapData and ByteArray object data which is then able to be accessed by the parent SWF.

Not sure if this will work or if the security sandbox prevents access to RTMP data unconditionally. I know this method has been used for simple cross-domain data transfers over HTTP with success. This may be something different alltogether as a security policy file doesn’t mean “boo” in regard to RTMP streams. More documentation on these security restrictions and more news on the features of FMS3 would help.

New Short: “Window View”

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I’ve completed a new short film called “Window View” which can be viewed at The Memoryspiral.

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“A scene from within a house- looking out at events in the backyard.”

I’m very happy with both the concept and the final realization. There were some technical considerations I was able to get around with the tools in Premiere CS2… specifically using a garbage mask to remove props I left in frame on one shot- oooops! Haven’t had a look at the new version yet, but do want to give it a try after the full trial is released to see if it speeds up my workflow at all.