Monday, May 14, 2007

Idiot's Guide to Flash on the web

We all have our moments of shame. Especially when our best efforts are mocked by cryptic error messages and everything we do seems to fail. My worst moments seem to come more often when using Flash. And to that end I have created the BASIC version of posting a Flash video on a website.

Posting a Flash Video on a Website

Requirements:

• Website (hosting company, domain name, etc.)
• Flash software
• Flash video file

Technically you don't need a Flash video file. You can import video directly into Flash with File -> Import -> Import Video. Flash also comes with a decent video encoder that will convert most video formats to Flash video. It's simple and fairly intuitive. For help with Flash video encoder see this post: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=458911&rl=1

Process:

• Start out by creating a new folder and saving your Flash video in it
• Open up Flash and choose to create a new Flash document
• Choose File -> Import -> Import Video

• Choose Browse, navigate to and select the video file, Choose Open
• Remove the file path in front of the video This step ensures that the Flash file can be moved around on the server
• Choose Next twice
• Pick a skin that you like, choose Next, and then Finish

• You should see a screen similar to the image above.
• Click on the white background, then click on the button next to size in properties
• Choose the radio to match the size to the contents and choose Ok
• Now select the Publish settings button

• Important: change the local playback security to Access Network only and choose Publish
• Now Choose Ok, Then File -> Save, and your done with Flash
• Now choose your favorite FTP client (I prefer Filezilla) and upload the files that were just created to your server. You will be able to see your video from a browser by combining your domain name and the name of the html file created when you published from Flash (If you uploaded it to the base directory).

Further Study

The next step from here is to use your own webpages. You can easily copy the code created from the HTML file that is published and paste it into your own code. I would recommend using the Javascript that is published with CS3 to prevent the IE "click to activate" message.

Now that I've covered the basics, I will delve into more of the programming aspects of Flash. Next week I will cover a method for catching the event that is fired when a Flash video is finished playing.