Making tutorials - your wishlist - Page 3

[somedude3488]

I have flash 10 and it worked fine.

Check here for older versions: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266.html

[cwarn23]

I have found the following download page and am downloading version 9 and it is a huge download which will take hours.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266.html
Hopefully it will work.
Edit: Just saw your post and the links are identical so now I am confident that this is the official download.

[somedude3488]

If you can't get anything else to work, try another player.

Another I have tried is http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/.

It worked, but there was something about it I didn't like (can't remember what it was though).

[cwarn23]

If you can't get anything else to work, try another player.

Another I have tried is http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/.

It worked, but there was something about it I didn't like (can't remember what it was though).

Wow, at first sight I like that one better. And it doesn't contain a "feature" the other flv player has. That is it's possible to skip a few minutes of the video instead of being redirected to the start. Will start to set it up but that is what I saw on the demo.

[cwarn23]

I just installed the JW Player but at the moment there is no buffer. Is it possible to set a buffer? My link is http://www.syntax.cwarn23.info/media/index.html

[cwarn23]

Cool, discovered that the player has some impressive documentation at http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/wiki/FlashVars

Now that I have my player working, could anyone reading this review the quality of my first video tutorial at http://syntax.cwarn23.info/media/index.html

[somedude3488]

It works. The quality is ok.

The video cuts off though. The entire tutorial is not there.

[cwarn23]

Well for those with a slow internet connection every 10 seconds the video will pause and buffer then continue. I hate how that happens but I guess there is no way around it.

[somedude3488]

How long is the video suppose to be?

[nav33n]

The quality is okay. The seek bar doesn't work though. And since it doesn't work, it's difficult to know the duration of the video (and go forward or backwards). But, overall, thumbs up for the effort.
(One suggestion. If you also provide the source code along with the tutorial, it would be good).
Eg. http://www.phpvideotutorials.com/lesson02/

[cwarn23]

How long is the video suppose to be?

The video is meant to be around 30 minutes. Also I am going to try another flv player because the current one does only live streaming and doesn't do playback. Also the current one is slow at processing as I calculated the speed to be about 0.08kbps for the video.

[somedude3488]

Only 9 minutes is actually playing for me.

[cwarn23]

Only 9 minutes is actually playing for me.

I just changed the viewer that plays the video so try again. Also note that after you start playing it - wait for 15 seconds then drag the circle on the bar back to the very beginning. That should act as a buffer until I pay for the upgraded software.

[cwarn23]

I got the buffer working but does anybody recommend a better flv player and if so what's the link to the download/docs?

[Edit]
After trying 4 flv players only 1 of them renders on the fly. Could this be because of all the compression I have done on the flv file? Would it be better if the flv file was less compressed? At the moment the video is on the follow specs
Visual Bitrate: 512
Audio Bitrate: 32
Frames per second: 24
Frame size: 640x480
[/Edit]
So do you think I should increase the visual bitrate for faster interpretation from flash?

[somedude3488]

For me the video loads fast enough that the buffer really doesn't matter. I downloaded the actual flv file and played it with Media Player Classic and it is only 9 minutes. The tutorial is cut off when you start coding the for loop (see the link below).

http://www.box201.com/~kkeith/image.jpg

(For some weird reason I could not open up the attachment manager)

[cwarn23]

I am going to upload a new flv file tonight and hopefully that will solve this unknown problem and I have also changed the compression ratios so that although it is still about the same size it might load faster and will have more frames per second. I will try playing the video from start to finish for you.

[edit]
I just played the entire video and saw what you were talking about. The new video should be posted by some time tomorrow. Takes about 5 or 6 hours to upload.
[/edit]

[digital-ether]

Here is the tutorial on how to get seeking possible in the JW Player.
http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/tutorials/HTTP-Video-Streaming

This allows seeking to a not yet buffered part of the video. If you're wondering why you can't just do this with regular HTTP "range" headers see: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forum/Feature-Suggestions/8167/streaming-via-standard-HTTP-byte-ranges
and http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403030.html

I haven't tried the other players, but I'm sure they have something similar. The only way to do it in a standard way, would be to use a media streaming server that Flash understands, like Red5.
http://osflash.org/red5

[digital-ether]

I am going to upload a new flv file tonight and hopefully that will solve this unknown problem and I have also changed the compression ratios so that although it is still about the same size it might load faster and will have more frames per second. I will try playing the video from start to finish for you.

[edit]
I just played the entire video and saw what you were talking about. The new video should be posted by some time tomorrow. Takes about 5 or 6 hours to upload.
[/edit]

You should set up the flash player locally, and test the video before uploading if you don't already...

[cwarn23]

You should set up the flash player locally, and test the video before uploading if you don't already...

The only problem with that is it loads instantly instead of buffered. Also the new flv is uploaded but the quality is rather poor. So I will try and double the quality and upload another new flv file but I have tested the first 18 minutes of the clip and it didn't blank out (the new flv). Also tonight I shall upload the new flv file with will be something like 270MB. The link to this current video without the blankout is at http://www.syntax.cwarn23.info/media/index.html

[cwarn23]

I have just found two flv players and am asking which do you think is the better one? The links are as follows:
http://syntax.cwarn23.info/media/default.html
and
http://syntax.cwarn23.info/media/index.html
Do you think index.html is better or default.html? Also what do you think of the information quality from the video tutorial any one of the above two links?

[somedude3488]

Both players are ok. The default.html one has that flvplayer image in the upper right hand corner which is annoying.

As for the content of the tutorial, I have noticed some errors.

The entire tutorial is suppose to be about a blog, not a blog commenting system. Blogs don't allow anyone to add their own post. There should be an admin area where the blog owner updates and adds blog entries. You just have shown how to add comments.

HTML:

You didn't declare a doctype.
You are missing the <html></html> tags.
Your form tag is missing the action attribute which is required.
Your textarea is missing the cols and rows attributes which are required.
You are using inline styling which isn't good.
Indent your html so its easier to read.

PHP:
The method of post separation you used doesn't make sense to me. You are adding unnecessary data to the file.

Your code doesn't allow for line breaks. They are forgotten when the post is submitted. If you replace those with nl2br() and then store the posts with a new line between them you can just use file() to get the data.

You need to show how to open up files with fopen,fread,fclose because not all of the viewers will have php5 for the file_get_contents.

The alternating colors could be handled differently. Why not use the % operator?

Checking if $_POST is set will always return true. I wouldn't use that. You should check to see that the submit button name is in the post array.

There were some other things that didn't quite make sense to me. I will look through it again to see if I understand what you were trying to do.

[cwarn23]

I shall fix all of that in the next version of the tutorial and the only part of kkeith29's comment that I would disagree with is the following:

Your textarea is missing the cols and rows attributes which are required.

Well what I did there was I used css to set the box size instead of using cols and rows. So css took over that job making it more efficient. So I as I said, thanks for the comment on that and I have just discovered a new flv player which is free (others cost hundreds with a doggy license) and should do the job. You will be able the view the viewer I am going to use at
http://www.syntax.cwarn23.info/media/new.html
Wonder what other negative comments there will be on this video?

[somedude3488]

Sorry, I might of sounded at bit harsh there. Its 6:13am here and I haven't been to bed yet. I was just listing what I saw. I figured since others will be viewing and learning from it, the tutorial must be as simple as possible using the best techniques.

The rows and cols comment comes from the fact the w3 validator says they are required.

I am recoding the tutorial using the stuff I mentioned earlier. I will post it here for you to look at and see if you want to implement any of it.

[cwarn23]

Sorry, I might of sounded at bit harsh there. Its 6:13am here and I haven't been to bed yet.

I think you misunderstood part of my text. I actually like the negative feedback because then I know what to change for next time. So it is great that you posted so many questions and statements. Just for that I'll add + to your rep.

The rows and cols comment comes from the fact the w3 validator says they are required.

Ok, then I shall read the w3 documentation to see how they recommend using both css and html (cols/rows) usage.

[somedude3488]

The new player you are using has a flaw in it. When I press play it starts the video, but doesn't show a pause button. I just goes directly back to play. So when I try to pause it, it darkens the screen and keeps playing the video. Its like the button is inverted.

[cwarn23]

Doh.
Version 10 of Flash is so incompatible with version 9 designed apps. With version 9 of Flash the bar is perfect but as soon as I go into Internet Explorer which has version 10 then the bar as you said is backwards. I guess I have another long journey finding a free flv player ahead of me.

[somedude3488]

Here is my version of your tutorial. The css styling is incomplete as I didn't feel like doing it. This is xhtml strict validated. The php is untested but looked like it would work.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
	<title>My Blog</title>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
	<style type="text/css">
		body {
			font-family: arial,"arial black","sans serif";
			font-size: 12px;
		}
		#container {
			width: 500px;
		}
		.gray {
			background-color: #999;	
		}
		.light-gray {
			background-color: #ccc;
		}
		#container .entry {
			width: 500px;
			margin-top: 15px;
			border: 1px #333 solid;
		}
		#container .entry .name {
			/*style the name here*/
		}
		#container .entry .content {
			/*style the content here*/
			padding: 5px;
		}
		.form .form-row {
			/*style form rows here*/
		}
		.form .form-label,.form-data {
			padding: 5px;
			/*style form labels and inputs here*/
		}
	</style>
</head>
<body>
	<div id="container">
<?php

$data = array_chunk( file('data.txt'),2 );

$i = 0;
foreach( $data as $entry ) {
	list( $name,$content ) = $entry;
	$color = ( ( $i % 2 ) == 0 ? 'gray' : 'light-gray' );
	echo <<<ENTRY
		<div class="entry {$color}">
			<div class="name">Name: {$name}</div>
			<div class="content">{$content}</div>
		</div>
ENTRY;
	$i++;
}

if ( isset( $_POST['submit'] ) ) {
	$name = htmlentities( $_POST['name'],ENT_QUOTES );
	$entry = str_replace( array('\r\n','\r','\n'),'<br />',htmlentities( $_POST['data'],ENT_QUOTES ) );
	//can add error handling here, check for duplicate entries
	file_put_contents( 'data.txt',"{$name}\n{$entry}\n",FILE_APPEND );
}

?>
		<div class="form">
			<form action="index.html" method="post">
				<div class="form-row">
					<div class="form-label">Name:</div>
					<div class="form-data"><input type="text" name="name" /></div>
				</div>
				<div class="form-row">
					<div class="form-label">Entry:</div>
					<div class="form-data"><textarea cols="30" rows="7"></textarea></div>
				</div>
			</form>
		</div>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

[cwarn23]

I shall make some new code with yours being a guide of what features should be implemented (example: I see you added a name field for each poster). Also I'm not sure if this applies in your script but the file function can be a bit buggy because at the end of each array it appends the string "\r\n" which is the new line in the text file. I will post new code in the next 1 or 2 days on this thread to see if it is good enough to be aired.

[somedude3488]

I have never had that problem (I must not of noticed it). You can just read the file and use explode with "\n" kind of like you did before. Or use array_filter right after the file() call.

[cwarn23]

I just found a free flv player and can be previewed at
http://www.syntax.cwarn23.info/media/new.html
Are you able to spot any obvious bug that I didn't see. I know the full screen mode doesn't work but other than that is it all ok? Thanks.