Flash Video Player: ActionScript 3.0

My agenda is to rewrite my AS2.0 video player to a new & improved ActionScript 3.0 code base. I probably could have converted the old player but there was way too much code and for a crash course in object oriented programming, I'm challenging myself to rewrite the entire thing. I'll continue to update this page as I build out & enhance the player. The way this thing is turning out already puts my old player to shame!

Section Notes

04.09.10 I finally came back to this (again). I got side-tracked by... well, the year 2010. I fixed some things and I'm going to try & wrap this up (hopefully this year) without getting distracted again :)

08.13.09 I finally got back around to working on the video player. I made a bunch of enhancements adding RTMP (or any of the FMS protocols) support to the player. That's why you still don't see the usual easy stuff like full screen/centering/better x/y control because I'm hacking away at the tricky stuff first. Now the player supports both a web URL and any of the RTMP protocol URL via the XML configuration. You can use the default FMS applications ("live" or "vod") and connect to a live feed or any file hosted on a video server. You can also specify a custom application but I have yet to test & play with this.

I basically rewrote half of the player and eliminated Video Object altogether. The entire player now just uses the FLVPlayback because for live streams, there is added functionality/configuration in that component offering superb playback of a stream, where as with the Video Object, live streams are really choppy and need a bunch of tweaking to make them look half-way decent. FLVPlayback is more bloated and managing its index, netStream & netConnection instances is no fun, but it wasn't that big of an issue. Fine tuning the scub/seek bar and handling the enabled or disabled XML options in the configuration file requires a lot of coffee and/or Red Bull.

04.08.09 Volume toggle is in. Volume bar still in the works. I'll eventually make a list of existing features & things that are still floating around in my head (view/add cue points, custom links & more).

04.03.09 Multiple video file functionality is now in. Further enhancements/adjustments/options/audio etc. still in the works. Notice how you can't seem to scrub the frames with the F4V format? That's odd. Makes me want to stick with FLV. Maybe I'll find an answer somewhere.

03.09.09 Moving right along, this thing is now feeding off of an xml configuration file. Most graphical elements are now configured externally. Still a work in progress so ignore anything weird :) Next build will feature ability to manage multiple video files & additional GUI/masking options/adjustments. When the player loads up I already have some crazy error handling in place that the player responds to/displays if you have paths broken here or there.

02.16.09 So here it is. I'm rolling out what I've got so far. It looks basic & featureless (don't let that fool you) but it's already much faster & more efficient. All the bells & whistles are still on the to-do. The video scrubbing is ten times better then the old player. Pure OOP with no frame-based animation. It's a huge learning curve for me as a designer/visual developer, but even though it's all programmatic, the end result is visual enough, and I'm already enjoying the benefits of AS3.

Projects [Go Back]