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February 27, 2007
Aftermixing at Brightcove
Today at the Adobe Engage event, Jeremy Allaire showed a little bit of Aftermix, an unreleased video mixing application from Brightcove. I'm very excited to see all of the posts and discussion on Aftermix and its possibilities, especially since I have my hand in the making of this Flex 2 application. Here's a roundup of what others are writing about Aftermix:
A GooTube lookout from David Berlind.
Jeff Barr writes about Aftermix, consumers, and the video-snacking culture.
Kristen Nicole suggests that Brightcove keeps quality first.
Everyone's favorite prolific blogger Ryan Stewart has a post.
Mashable has a post with a title we can all agree as hyperbolic, Brightcove Launching AfterMix - Pulls Ahead of YouTube?
James Governor's post asks Brightcove to remember the 'roots.
February 21, 2007
Using Asserts In Flex
I find myself using assertions all the time in my Flex classes and am curious if others do the same thing. Along with a logging system (to turn tracing on and off), and some unwritten unit tests, I find the asserts to be the most helpful tool for keeping myself sane as my current project keeps growing.Here's a good explanation of asserts for C++ and here's one for Java. I tend to use assertions in a lot of complicated AS classes or really any place where I expect something not to happen (since, of course, that impossible thing eventually does happen).
So do you need an Assert class? It's not hard to add one to your project. Here's a simple class that will work. You may need to modify it to show an alert if you're catching a lot of errors.
package
{
public class Assert
{
// call enabled before calling assert(). This value is
// usually tied to a constants file where the value
// can be tokenized and turned off in production
public static const enabled:Boolean = true;
public static function assert(assertion:Boolean,
msg:String = null):void
{
if (! assertion)
{
throw new Error("An assertion failed" +
(msg ? (": " + msg) : "."));
}
}
}
}
Posted by Brian at 10:12 PM
YouTube's Hidden Anger for the Play Button
This was too amusing not to post* and a reminder to make sure no traces show up in a production SWF. Below is the trace output from an embedded YouTube video. In the middle of the output: "showing the goddamn play button".
Constructing movie
Warning: onStatus is not a function
Ending the movie is :_level0.tube.movie
constructing MovieController:undefined
timer.seek_total_timeundefined
regular:undefined smal._xstart:undefined
constructing EmbedSoundController:undefined
setting movie
setting the movie video_id:1AH9VEM_qC0 base_url:http://www.youtube.com/
DIFFERENT loading :undefined vs http://www.youtube.com/get_video?video_id=1AH9VE
M_qC0&t=OEgsToPDskKQgp5rypS4WQ0olAuex1N1
registering controller to:_level0.tube.movie
registering sound to:_level0.tube.movie
controller movie is:_level0.tube.movie
show v:100
showing the goddamn play button
sw:425 sh:350 rw:450.55 rh:356.1
resizing to:425:350
resizing to:425:318.75 ratio:1.33333333333333
overlay: 425,318.75
end_screen: 425,318.75
actual size of movie is:425:318.9
resize width:425 bg offset30.55
moive_width:425 w:425 mx:0
px:undefined py:undefined
fiting image to:425:318.75 actual:425:318.75
we loaded the image
*Yes YouTube is a competitor in some ways to the company I work for, Brightcove, but it's certainly not meant as a dig at them!
February 19, 2007
Head of the Data Services Team is Blogging
William Wechtenhiser, the manager of the Flex data services team, has a new blog. He does mention in the blog that this is what he does, but I bet most people missed it. Whether you use data services now or not, this is a good blog to subscribe to.
Posted by Brian at 10:33 AMFebruary 18, 2007
Jobs' Thoughts on DRM
Steve Jobs has sparked more conversation on DRM in music with his Thoughts on Music article. I'm sure this article will percolate into the conversations on video DRM (or creators' rights).
Macrovision, a copy prevention company, responded to the article. And daring fireball posted an amusing response to Macrovision's letter.
February 17, 2007
Error #1010: A term is undefined and has no properties
A lot of people have been looking here for information on "Error #1010: A term is undefined and has no properties". One of the iframe posts is bringing people here, but they aren't getting any error details from the post. You can read more about this error and all other runtime errors in the language reference. This error most commonly occurs when you try to access a property on an undefined Array item. For example:
var array:Array = new Array();var noProp:Object = array[1].prop;
You may run into this error in the framework, especially in the datagrid. To read more about this, try a mail-archive.com search of flexcoders.
Posted by Brian at 4:16 PMFebruary 15, 2007
I'll Be At 360Flex
On a cold and icy day like today in Boston it's nice to remember that in a few weeks I'll be in San Jose at 360 Flex. I hope to meet a lot of Flex developers and see many of the familiar Adobians. I'll be heading there with Tom Ruggles for Brightcove.
February 10, 2007
Random Videos Redux
I was just looking at my awstats for deitte.com and noticed that a lot of people are finding the site with the search terms "random videos". If you search Google for random videos, you'll see this post in the top 10! It's the first time I've seen that a lot of people are coming to the site for video info.
Time for a few more random videos:
The YouTube (or Brightcove) Gotcha Game
How to Shotgun a Bottled Beer
Nintendos are Hot
A lot more random Brightcove videos can be found on the Brightcove Video Addict blog.
February 1, 2007
Personal Channels on Brightcove
You can now create your own personal channel on Brightcove and upload your own videos to it. Just register and you can start uploading and marking your favorite videos.
One thing I've noticed is that an uploaded video takes a few minutes to show up on your page, so don't think that your upload failed if you don't see it right away. There's a few quirks, and there's some features that I'd like to see, but it's a good start. I especially like the inline editing.
I'm not sure how this monkey got on the Internet, but check out his page.
Posted by Brian at 3:43 PM
