Monthly Archives: September 2007

BitmapData.draw() Problem in AIR

Posted on by
4

I’m using AIR integration with Flex Builder 3 to contain and package an AS2 SWF which was originally using Screenweaver for deployment to a standalone app.

The problem I’ve noticed is that I have two areas into which each are being drawn from another MC using BitmapData.draw() which work just great in Flash CS3 when testing, but when deploying the AIR app using Flex 3, only the first BitmapData object is actually drawn on the stage. The other is totally blank.

[IMAGE MISSING!]

An example of this is above. Both windows should have the same image displayed at this point. I’m drawing out the rightmost image first- so the left image never gets drawn.

If I reverse the order in which they are drawn- the first one to invoke draw() is always the one that gets drawn.. very strange. Is this a known bug? Granted, it may have to do with my wrapping an AS2 app within an AS3 wrapper… but it’s really kinda weird nevertheless.

I’ve filed it as a bug with Adobe in any case.

CamStudio 2.5 “Beta” Released

Posted on by
1

CamStudio 2.5 is a screen recording application I’ve been using to author screencasts for the online courses I teach. These types of tutorials are really useful when teaching new users how to go about building things in Flash. It includes the option to output in FLV as well- so that is just perfect.

I kind of missed the release of this by a week or two. For some time, the website wasn’t updated and I had thought the project abandoned. Glad I was wrong- apparently this is considered a beta because 2.6 is on the horizon. Strange reasoning for a beta- but I can understand the need to release something… but having “2.5 beta” followed by a “2.5″ release makes more sense, in my opinion. I suppose they are only names.

I’ve posted before about some troubles I had with the previous versions of CamStudio getting the AVI output processed correctly in Premiere. I haven’t had the chance to try out this new version yet but it apparently works on Windows Vista and includes some expanded windowing options.

I’m a big fan of the project and very happy to see things moving forward.

Flash Player 9 FSCommand() Bug

Posted on by
1

I’m working on a rather large AS3 project through Fractured Vision Media which relies on the flash.system.fscommand package to properly transmit data from the application to its container layer. Unfortunately, we’ve come across a bug in which FSCommand calls are ignored! Through some quick research (e.g. Google) it was discovered that more than a few others have come across this problem as well.

The workaround for now is to be sure you are generating unique argument strings to pass through the FSCommand. This could involve changing the case of different characters in your argument string or appending a unique ID bassed off of something like the current time.

Does anyone know the status of this bug? Will it be patched in “Moviestar”? Seems pretty major to me…

Flash Media Server 3 Announced

Posted on by
1

I really, really hope that one of the improvements is a better security model when it comes to RTMP security restriction when accessing byte-level data…

PLEASE, Adobe…

Allow developers to access RTMP streams via BitmapData.draw() and SoundMixer.computeSpectrum()… please!

Features important to my projects include:

  • Improved performance
  • H.264 and AAC streaming support
  • New security features
  • Improved live video support
  • Tracking

Read more at the FAQ:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pdfs/FMS3FAQ.pdf

Good Job, Microsoft

Posted on by
Reply

I know it’s fashionable to trash Microsoft at every turn and I have a lot of gripes with the company (Internet Explorer, anyone?), but with Office 2007, I really have a lot of nice things to say.

I’m not an Excel person. I know really very little about spreadsheets in general and tend to do anything like this in Word and just be done with it. I never took any business classes but thankfully, my wife was a business major and she can lend a hand whenever I do want to accomplish something in Excel. She helped me create a simple invoicing form in Excel which is very useful when billing clients, other than that- I know nothing.

So this year I decided to begin tracking my students in Excel instead of through Word. I feel more familiar with it after using the aformentioned billing spreadsheet for a year or so and can definitely see the advantages of tracking student grades in this format. I was about to start mucking around to create my own and thought to look first to see whether Microsoft had a template for this sort of thing.

Performing a quick search from Excel brought up a lot of different templating options, one of which was perfect for my needs. Another nice thing is that I didn’t even have to open a browser or anything to download it, search for it within my local file system, or anything like that. It was all automatic. I was able to customize easily and throw my students up into it with no problem whatsover. It’s a perfect solution, in this case.

The point being that I’m very pleased right now. Someone has saved me a lot of time and I’m grateful for that. I’m a firm believer in expressing appreciation where it is due- so…

Thank you, Microsoft.