FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Adding Video Using Dreamweaver 8 ?
Prior to the release of Dreamweaver 8, the Flash Video Kit for Dreamweaver MX 2004 was a spending decision on your part if you wanted to add Flash video to your pages. The Video Kit is now bundled with the application and is even better than the retail version of the Video Kit.
Tip: You can't create a FLV in Dreamweaver 8. That can only be done either by encoding first (See
FLV Hosting Encoding) or ON2 Flix or by using Flash Professional 8 or from the Flash Video Kit. This tutorial will assume you have been handed a FLV file.
Seriously, all you need to get into the video game is a FLV and the ability to click a mouse.
Here's how:
1. Open Dreamweaver 8 and create a new page.
2. Click the mouse and select Insert > Media > Flash Video...
The process starts by selecting the Flash Video menu item.
When you release the mouse the Insert Flash Video dialog box opens. This is where the process of adding a video to your Dreamweaver 8 page starts.
The entire process of adding video to Dreamweaver pages is contained in this dialog box.
3. Select the Video Type pop-down menu.
Choose Progressive Download video if you don't have a Flash Comm account.
This is your first decision: Is the video to be streamed from your web site or through a Flash Communication Server or a Flash Video Streaming Service? Your choice will actually change the look of the dialog box because a Streaming Video requires either an RTMP address and an instance name for the video. If you don't have a
Flash Comm account choose the
Progressive Download option.
A Progressive Download isn't as bad as it seems when you first encounter the term. The video usually starts playing after a second or two of the video loading into the Player. This takes slightly more time than the other
option which starts playing immediately.
4. After you select Progressive Download click the Browse button and navigate, using the Select File dialog box, to the location of the FLV file you want to include in the page.
The video will appear in the URL area of the Insert Flash Video dialog box. (SKIP THIS IF USING Flash Comm (FCS)
STREAMING)
The video is located and linked to the page.
Streaming:
Streaming requires an RTMP address and the name of the FLV file to be attached to the stream. (Note; this is a sample setup, you would use your own
account settings as given to you on account activation)
Your next decision will contain an extremely pleasant surprise if you are familiar with the Video Kit.
5. Click the Skin pop down and select a skin.
If you used the Video Kit, the first thing you will notice is there are now 9 styles to choose from. Just keep in mind each skin has a minimum video width associated with it. As you can se in the image below, each skin contains specific features ranging from simple Start/Stop buttons to volume controls. What is even more interesting is these skins can be customized. The process of doing this is well beyond the scope of this article because it is rather complex. Still, the ability to add you client's logo to the player is available.
Having chosen the skin, you really don't have much more to do. Click the Detect Size button and the video's dimensions are pulled from the
FLV's metadata and applied to the size of the player.
Click the Detect Size button and video's dimensions are pulled from the FLV metadata and added to the dialog box.
Finally you have to decide whether or not to select the "Auto play" and "Auto rewind" buttons. Selecting them, when you have controls seems a bit redundant but, if you want the movie to start playing as soon as it loads, select "Auto play".
The last choice is whether you want your visitors to obtain the latest copy of the Flash Player which, as of this writing, is Flash Player
8, with Flash Player 9 coming out very soon. Selecting this adds a detection script to your page and, if the user doesn't have the Flash 8 Player, he or she is redirected. This step is both optional and customizable. Deselect it and the detection script isn't added. If you do select it, you can either use the message or add one of your own such as, "You don't have the stuff. How about we go get it." or something like that.
Save the page and press F12 to see the video. Naturally you will have to have the settings correctly entered as provided in your account setup files with
FLV Hosting
When you click OK to close the Flash Video dialog box, two swf files — one is the player and the other is the skin — are added to the directory where you saved the page. They must be uploaded to the server for the video to play properly.
Finally, can you change your mind — switch the skin or the FLV, or change and of the settings after you create the player? The answer is yes. The video will appear on your page as a gray box with a FLV icon in the middle. Click the video and the Property inspector will change to reflect the values in the Flash Video dialog box.
A Cautionary IMPORTANT Note:
In our example playback, seen working at TEST
FCS APP HERE
Basically for Streaming Video, Dreamweaver wants a URI in the format 'rtmp://myserver/myapp/myinstance'.
The server URI you enter using FLV Hosting Settings into the box needs to be changed to:
rtmp://198.64.172.160/test_video/_definst_/movies/g
stream name- simpsons
(Note; this is a sample setup, you would use your own
account settings as given to you on account activation)
It should work. But there is a bug with dreamweaver. It sometimes fails to take the path after myinstance i.e. _definst_ and does not display movies/g in the code that it generates. So even though the correct path was given in the dialog box, information may not come right in code.
To overcome this problem, you may have to manually change the code of the html file.
Change appName=test_video/_definst_ in the code to test_video/_definst_/movies/g in both object and embed tag.