macromedia flash flashcom: I turned in my resignation last week, was pulled of my current project and
asked to (in a week) figure out how to do the following:
Install FMS on a test server (which we have).
Configure it to play the video from a training DVD we have.

The intent is to get our nurses away from having to come to the training room
and viewing the DVD one at a time, but allow them access from a browser in
their ward.

Obviously, I do not have time to become a FMS guru. I need to try to do this
qick and dirty. I just this morning unstalled FMS. I have no idea how to

1) convert the data on the DVDs to a format that can be viewed using FMS. The
DVDs have no 'copy protection' on them. I can copy the structure to a hard
drive and play from the files on my computer directly.
2) set up the server to play the files.
3) the original DVD has a menu that lets you navigate to specific chanpters.
Can this be done within FMS?

I am VERY, VERY new to this technology (I'm basically a VB/.net/SQL Server
client-server application developer in my real life) so some hand-holding will
be greatly appreciated... (please) :smile;

I have just been told to not worry too much about the conversion part, although
it will need to be done eventually. The "most important" part is to figure out
how to set up the server to do the actual streaming. I do not want to spend a
LOT of time researching, reading up on FMS, etc., because I am going to be out
of here in a week and probably will not do anything with Flash again.

Basically want I want to know is, assuming I have an AVI file (myVidoe.avi)
what are the full steps I must take to get it into a format the FMS can stream
(I believe it is a .flv file), where do I place the file that is to be streamed
(what directory, etc.), how do I set up FMS to actually stream it, and how do I
reference the file from the client code HTML to actually pull in the vidoe on
their browser.

Pretty much a quick 1,2,3 basic tutorial on how to get this going as quickly
as possible.

Okay, I got the aviconverted to flv. Can someone step me through what to do at this point?

Have a look at this tutorial. It should point you in the right direction.

http://www.mcalister.cc/ddd/flv/index.html

Okay, I think I have something going. If someone can confirm what I did here:
I created directory \test\streams\_definst_ under Program
Files\Macromedia\Flash Media Server 2\applications on the server.

- I copied main.asc to \test\ folder on the server.
- Using the sample stuff, I created cafe_townsend_chef.flv from
cafe_townsend_chef.mov using the video encoder and copied the .flv file into
the _definst_ directory.
- Under Flash I created a project. I basically followed the steps of the
online tutorial. When I published it I ended up with test.html and
cafe_townsend_chef.flv.swf.
- I created a directory inetpub\wwwroot\\FLVTest\ on the server and copied
those two files to it.
- I also copied the file ClearOverPlaySeekMute.swf into that directory. I
thought I had read somewhere that it needed to be in the same directory as the
flv file, but with it there it was not showing up on the client browser.

I did not quite understand the part about the global security settings. Is
this something that needs to be configured on (all) client machines? The video
appeared to play fine on mine without changing any settings.

Apparently something is missing because we have tried to access the video from
a couple of other computers. They have Flash installed, do not give any erros,
but just display a blank page. If you move the mouse into the area where the
player is suppose to be, you get a message to press Enter or the Spacebar to
activate the control, but doing so does nothing.
Thinking I was actually grabbing local files, I renamed my original project
directory, cleared the cache from my browser but can still access the video on
the server.

Any ideas what I should look for?

Abou the "press Enter or the Spacebar to activate the control" message, that's
a behavior of internet explorer. As a result of the Eloas fiasco, any ActiveX
object in an html page using <embed> or <object> tags throws that warning. You
can get around it by writing the flash object to the page with javascript. Do a
web search for SWFObject.js .... that's a popular one.

As for the video playing on your machine but not others, here are some things
to consider:

Do all of the client machines have a current version of the Flashplayer?
You'll want to make sure it meets the requirements of your .swf. The version
requirement is determined by the Flash version you exported your .swf to.

It may be a firewall issue. Do the client machines have access to the FMS host
on ports 1935, 80, and/or any other ports you configured FMS to bind to?

Is there are firewall on the FMS machine? If so, have you opened 1935 and 80
to FMS there?

If there's no firewall in the way, perhaps it's a problem with the IP/host
you're using in your RTMP string. Can all of the client machines access FMS on
the IP or host you are using? Try accessing the FMS admin service from a
browser on the client machine, and see if you get a response. The admin service
listens on port 1111, so the URL would look like:

http://myFMSdomainORipAddress:1111


Hope it helps.

Jay,

Thanks for the reply. First of all, this is all on a company intranet. The
'server' for now is just a Windows XP machine with IIS and FMS installed on it.
I have been using it for a couple of months for some .net development I got
thrown into and now for this flash development. There is no firewall between
the other clients and this machine. They all have the latest version of Flash
player installed.

There would really be no difference in their configuration and mine. Which is
why I thought initially maybe something was being cached on my machine, or
since I initially created the project on my machine, there was something being
there that was causing the problem. That is why I renamed the original project
folder and cleared my cache.

I did the http://domain:1111 and got back the response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <result>
<level>error</level>
<code>NetConnection.Connect.Rejected</code>
<description>Admin user requires valid username and password.</description>
<timestamp>6/12/2007 1:04:58 PM</timestamp>
</result>

Doug

Well, if there has ever been a time I have wanted to slap myself on the side of
the head and call myself a dummy, this is it.

I have been using this machine as a test server for several months now to do
some .net development. To make it easy to get to from my machine I created an
entry in my hosts file and named it 'intranet'. I have been so use to using
that, that it is what I entered in the RTMP string. When I realized it, I
started to change it but someone else just added the same entry to their host
file and it worked.

It sure is a shame no one else has ever made a dumb mistake like that. Then I
would not feel so bad :-)