Beginner's Guide to Adobe Flash/Video/Using The FLVPlayback Component

The FLVPlayback component is designed to let you play FLV video over the internet. The following types of servers and video playback is supported:
 * Progressive download over HTTP
 * Streaming video over a Flash Communication Server (FCS)
 * Streaming video from a Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS)

The FLVPlayback Component has several features and it can be easily dragged onto a stage and set up to play FLV files.



Figure 1: FLVPlayback Component on a stage.

After the FLVPlayback Component has been dragged to the stage, there are a few parameters to be set-up. Select the FLVPlayback Component player and open up the parameters. To open the parameters, choose Window > Properties > Parameters. A dialogue box will appear where the properties area is. See Figure 2. Here you can change the size of the video, the path to the video, and so on.



Figure 2: FLVPlayback Component Parameters.

The most important part of the parameters is the contentPath. Double click on "contentPath" and a new dialogue box will appear.



Figure 3: contentPath dialog box.

Input either the URL to the FLV, or the relative path of it. If the main SWF is in your "home" folder, and the FLV file is in your "flvideo" folder, then the relative path to said video is /home/flvideo/videoname.flv.

The remaining parameters do the following:


 * autoPlay: Setting this to "true" will automatically play the video once the page is loaded.
 * autoRewind: Setting this to "true" will rewind the movie to the beginning after it is done playing.
 * autoSize: Setting this to "true" will set the dimensions of the movie to the source FLV file.
 * bufferTime: Time in seconds to buffer a movie in memory before it begins playing it. It is very useful when streaming FLV files, but it has little bearing on progressive download FLVs, unless they are of a very high quality.
 * contentPath: A URL to an FLV file or XML file that determines how to play one or more FLV files.
 * cuePoints: This is used to synchronize points in the FLV file with other Flash animations, graphics, text, etc.
 * isLive: Setting this to "true" determines if the FLV file is streaming from a FCS server.
 * maintainAspectRatio: Setting this to "true" will keep the aspect ratio of the FLV file if it is rescaled.
 * skin: Allows you to choose a custom made UI for your FLVPlayback Component player.
 * skinAutoHide: If the mouse is not hovered over the video, the skin is hidden.
 * totalTime: The number of seconds a FLV file has.
 * volume: A percentage representing the volume of a FLV file.