Flash CS4 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Getting Fancy with Video

In This Chapter

• Creating your own video player with ActionScript

• Using embedded cue points

• Working with metadata

• Using ActionScript cue points

• Adding captions to a video

Now that you can convert different kinds of video files to FLV and F4V files, you're ready to use the different kinds of information embedded in videos. In Chapter 3, you see how to embed cue points into a video during the conversion process. In this chapter, you get the cue points from a NetStream that plays your video; then you get more information that's hidden in the video — the metadata — by using the NetStream class. To do all this, you build a simple player with ActionScript 3.0.

You also see how to add cue points to a video that has no embedded cue points, using both the FLVPlayer component and the friendly, incredibly powerful ActionScript 3.0. Then you wrap up the chapter by tweaking some of the controls in the playback process.

Making Your Own Video Player

When you embed cue points in a video, you need to use the NetStream class to get them out. To use NetStream, you need a NetConnection instance, and if you want to see what you're streaming, you need a Video instance as well. That's it!

Understanding the process

Before you start getting those cue points, take a look at what you do to create the simplest video player in the universe:

1. Create a NetConnection instance.

2. Create a NetConnection ...