Video Player in Flash 8

Oh my gosh... Using video in Flash is ridiculously easy. Seriously. I created a pretty advanced video player today, in a matter of minutes. You can create a simple video player in a matter of minutes just by going to the File menu and importing a clip (File --> Import --> Import Video...). Follow the steps of the wizard, and then you "magically" have a great video player that looks good. Its really that easy. If you select the "Progressive download from a web server" option, it will create a player that loads a flv file progressively... so not only does it look good, but it is also FAST.

I took some time and created a more advanced player, but it still only took a few hours (that includes tracking down videos to test it). For my video player, I used the FLVPlayback component. The player takes in an xml file name as an initial parameter. It then loads and parses the xml to determine a list of media clips and their titles, and then displays the content in a drop-down selection list. When you change the selected item in the list, it changes movie clip. Its quick and easy.

Check it out: Launch the Video Player (this requires flash 8)

Not only is it cool, but it is reusable. Just by changing the contents.xml file, you can use it to dislpay a completely different series of videos. You could have the XML be dynamcially created based on a search or user preferences. Using this approach, you can have a really cool context-based video clip series. The possibilities really are limitless. I hope everyone else enjoys this as much as I do.