.FLVs from Episode Playing Back Weirdly in Adobe Flash?

[Dan Brockett]

Hi all:

Using Telestream Episode 6.3 on Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.6 to input FCP 7 Animation Millions of Colors + clips and output .FLVs with an intact alpha so client can insert their own backgrounds.Client requested that all clips begin and end on a frame of video, not on black. Clips are being used in a computer simulation so the client wants it so that when a participant plays a clip, when it ends, it ends on a frame of video.

All QuickTimes I have output from FCP 7 begin and end on a frame of video. When I play the clips on my Mac, they play fine, alpha is intact and the clips play, then the Flash player stops back on the beginning frame of the clip. When client plays back clips on his PC using Flash Player, about half of the clips finish on a frame of video, but the other half finish on a frame of black? How can this be when the clips contain no black frames?

I am flying blind here, on my Mac, clips play properly and all end on a frame of video, but not for the client on PC Flash Player. Through process of elimination, it can't be the QuickTimes, they look perfect. The fact that the .FLVs play fine on my Mac and default to end on a video frame is perfect. Are there any settings or factors in the clients PC end of things that could be causing this weird inconsistent playback?

Thank you for any advice to this vexing issue, I am stumped.

Dan

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

...When client plays back clips on his PC using Flash Player, about half of the clips finish on a frame of video, but the other half finish on a frame of black? How can this be when the clips contain no black frames?

I am flying blind here, on my Mac, clips play properly and all end on a frame of video, but not for the client on PC Flash Player...

If you're sure these renders are all identical, I'd guess that the players are not finishing on a frame of black, but are displaying a black or a default opaque image after the video has completed. Maybe the player is expecting one more frame of video than actually exists. There's a parameter in most flash player implementations called wmode, it should be set to transparent. There is also the poster function, I've never tried specing eg. a transparent png as a poster.

I do believe that if this client wants this behavior to be consistent across platforms, they'll need to hire some flash/actionscript programing talent to create a little flash application that does what they want, and test across platforms. I myself am not experienced in the Flash authoring environment, but it encompasses much more than video playback methods, and I'd guess that an experienced programmer could cause the clip to play to a certain frame and pause there.

Or, if this is for online distribution, test a few of the common embedded players for web pages, like JWPlayer, Flash Media Playback, FloPlayer, etc. Possibly one of them is going to work as desired, using wmode parameters, or will have an easily controllable method to play to a defined frame.

Adobe's Flash environment can be a little confusing; their "Flash Player" is more of a set of playback methods and functions packaged in a browser plugin that a number of freely or commercially available players can use, or can be called from programmed Flash applications.

Typically one doesn't double-click on an FLV and expect the Adobe Flash Player to pop up like QT would. For harder stuff, build a player in the Adobe Flash authoring program.

Where did this "flash player" come from, and is it embedded in a web page? Now that I think about it, whenever I've done flash video transparency, I've used a default player out of the Flash authoring program...

PS. I consider transparency one of the harder tasks in video streaming and display... there are lots of places it can go sideways.