To All:

I am wondering if any know of a way that I can do the following with the media
server and/or player component.

a) Perform random access type seeks on a stream, I.E. seek to a specific in
time point in the media source or stream. The file will not be hosted locally.

b) Is there a way to quickly get image data itself from the stream. For
instance, is there a high performance way to get individual frames in to image
space so an external application (not the player) can perform conversions,
color corrections, etc. etc.

MANY thanks in advance.

Thanks,

Rex McDonald

FMS supports seeking... but the file must reside on your FMS server. Seeking is
by keyframe, so if you want a very accrurate seek, you'll want to encode your
video with a lot of keyframes.

I can't offer advice on any of the prebuilt media player components, as I
don't use them (they're bloated and somewhat limited).

As for image data, that's not supported by FMS. You can use FFMPEG to extract
the video frames and convert them to image files. FFMPEG runs from the command
line, so you can use it with your application server (php,asp,cfm, etc) to do
your conversions automatically.

Jay:

Thanks for the speedy reply. One thing you mentioned got me a little bit
curious;

"I can't offer advice on any of the prebuilt media player components, as I
don't use them (they're bloated and somewhat limited)."

Are there other player or API options for doing the client playback and
control?

Thanks again.

Rex

Originally posted by: Rex McDonald
Are there other player or API options for doing the client playback and
control?


The option is to build your own player with flash, and write your own
actionscript for connecting to and controlling your streams.

I prefer to go that route for a number of reasons:

1. I tend to have multiple video sources with my applications... sometimes
progressive, sometimes streaming, sometimes both. I also like to have a
failover scheme in place (connect to progressive if the FMS connection fails).
The prebuilt components don't do that without extensive modification.

2. I generally employ bandwidth detection so I can deliver connection speed
specific versions of the video files (specifically, deliver a low quality
stream to dialup users).

3. Skinning the prebuilt components is a great big pain in the neck, and
skinning isn't as flexible as with the player components I've developed for my
projects.

4. The prebuilt components include a rediculous volume of actionscript classes
(the bloat I mentioned in my last post). All of the prebuilt components use the
V2 component architecture, which adds needless weight to the .swf . All of the
little controls in the prebuilt players (buttons, sliders, etc.) require their
component classes. Using component classes for a big application with lots of
controls makes good sense, but for a video player with just a couple of
buttons, it's overkill and wasted bandwidth.

For example, the the prebuilt FLVPlayback component with a controller
component weights in at a healthy 101kb, which (IMO) is a rediculous amount of
weight for a video window and a couple of buttons. The same functionality an be
had in under 20kb if the actionscript is efficient and well written.

Hi I downloaded the free developer version to try it, yet can not open it, so I uninstalled it delete the dload, and download again, still can not install ??

Originally posted by: Joseph.Pratts
Hi I downloaded the free developer version to try it, yet can not open it, so
I uninstalled it delete the dload, and download again, still can not install ??
JPratts

Mind your forum etiquette. It's rude to hijack a thread with an unrelated
question.