Installing Flash Media Server 3 is simple. But actually using it afterwards can be a bit tricky. In this video tutorial I’ll walk through the installation process and then creating a video player - using videoMaru - to stream movies from FMS. There is also a videoRecorder included in the samples download so that you can see how to use your webCam to record videos to your hard drive.

The tutorial also covers how to set your router up so that you can stream videos from your PC to anyone on the Internet. Which can be very handy for application development.

Download Flash Media Server 3

Download Sample Applications

Here’s the WebCamRecorder built in Flex. PLEASE NOTE: if you hit the Start Recording button it will record video to MY hard drive. Maybe I’ll make a webcam viewer page for those of you who record themselves. You’ve been warned. :-)

NOTE: FlexBuilder now displays the live feed from your webcam when you switch to Design view. Which is sort of cool and all but when you switch back to Source view it doesn’t let go of the camera. So when you publish/test the application you won’t be able to see anything - or record - because FlexBuilder already has the stream and there can be only one. You’ll have to restart FlexBuilder to get it to give up the connection to your webcam.

A few more resources

If you’d like to apply smoothing to your VideoDisplay then try this.

Hopefully this will get you up and running with FMS3 pretty well. Please comment if you notice that I’ve missed anything.

If you get stuck with something try Kevin Mask’s suggestions at SDflex.org.

Flash and XML go together like peanut butter and jelly. If your working on a project where there is data inside of Flash that is likely to change then XML is the way to go. That way you, or anyone with a text editor, can update an XML file - essentially a text file - and change things inside your Flash app.

The downside to using XML is that the data you get back can be confusing as hell to navigate through. I had to deal with it enough that I finally created a class - PXP2 - that takes care of all the mundane aspects of using XML so that you can get right to work and skip a lot of code and confusion.

In this tutorial I’ll do a simple example of how I would create a site navigation using XML.

[ Download FLV ] [ Download sample files ]

A few notes: there is no AS3 version PXP2 of this because AS3 has the E4x class which is like PXP2 on steroids. I’ll do a tutorial on how to use E4x in a few weeks.

PXP2 stands for: Polygeek Xml Parsing Project = PXPP = PXP2

This video tutorial begins where the first one left off. Here you’ll learn to place your class files inside a unique name space within your global class path.

If you’ve ever downloaded someone else’s class files and couldn’t get them to work this might help.

[ download FLV ]

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Start building web applications with Adobe Flex Builder 2

Notes:

• An import statement adds that class to your SWF when it’s compiled and adds on to the file size of your SWF. If you’re importing a class but not using it then you’ll bloat your SWF filesize unnecessarily. This happens from time to time when you edit your code and remove a call to a class and forget to remove the import statement.

Lee Brimelow at gotoAndLearn.com did a video tutorial covering the use of custom classes. I’d suggest watching that if you still have any questions.

If you’re using class files ( .as ) you need to know where to put them. It can be a little confusing because they can go in more than one place. In the video below I’ll cover the basics of where you can put these files and make them work.

[ download FLV ]

Related videos: Class files with name spaces and the import statement

Adobe affiliate links help support video tutorials here at polyGeek.com

Start building web applications with Adobe Flex Builder 2

Lee Brimelow at gotoAndLearn.com did a video tutorial covering the use of custom classes. I’d suggest watching that if you still have any questions.