A story of how Flash videos aren’t always where they ought to be when publishing online.
After I finish silently shouting abuse at the person who shot this video I’m trying to publish, I sit back and tell myself that filming is an ‘art’ and that us ‘techno-geeks’ have no right telling these artisans how to frame a shot.
At least its player looks great, and upon testing locally all seems fine. Uploading presents no problems…despite what others may think…this is an art. Finally a live test…never had a problem before. Whack all the files on the server and away we go. Except this time I’m uploading the video file and its player to a folder especially for media files, not in with the web page it is going to be displayed on.
Of course, it doesn’t work. Now I feel a fool, I can’t even do my own job properly, and there I was hurling mental abuse at the creative geniuses down at video HQ. What is called for here is a truly artistic approach…trial and error! (Those arty types will continuously refine their work but convince you it was all shot from the hip, I can be like them!)
So now I spend ages working out where I went wrong, test, test and test again, and no doubt allow frustration to get the better of me…include appropriate expletives (optional).
But finally I work it out, allowing me to pretend to you that I knew what was wrong all along:
When linking to the external video from flash, by default it is linked relative to the Flash file (swf). When published online, the swf is pulled into the HTML page which then changes the source of the swf and therefore the link to the video file. The video file must be linked to as though its player was located in the same folder as the HTML page.
Philip Spain
Posted by contentformula 