FLV conundrum

[sybot]

ok guys,

I've been pondering the various ways in which video's can be used in flash, and how to use these methods to produce on different formats

so I've come here to seek some advice

The company I work for, creates multimedia presentations on CD. These are designed primarily in flash, the presentation houses a video that plays from start to finish, coinciding with slides that appear 'on cue' with the various slides. the presentation controls also offer the user the ability to skip through the presentation.

Now we upload these presentations to our testing site so the speaker in question can see and check the presentation, giving feedback on changes to slide order or skip positions and so on... After the go-ahead the presentation is then burned to CD and mass produced from here

An example can be found here
http://www.praemedica.net/work/BIG19...interview.html


I have a few queries that maybe some of you guys have come across

1. When uploading these presentations to the net, when the user starts playing the video, but wants to skip onto a later question, say 'question 10'... there is a delay in which the video stops and then plays several seconds later (often MANY seconds later) I did some looking into this, am I right in thinking that using 'FlashServer technology' will solve this problem? I am presuming the timeline cannot skip directly to this part of the video and begin buffering from here on a standard FLV?

2. When burned to a CD, there is still a 'pause' when skipping to different parts of the video (using FLV), although the delay is not as long as that of the online version, it still presents itself as a problem in my own eyes, when skipping from 'question 1' to 'question 9' were still waiting several seconds for the buffer to catch up... Is there a work around for this to make the skips more instantaneous? like like a dvd/cd skip? Perhaps and embedded video setup?


Thanks for taking the time to look at this, the post is a tad long winded

Any help or comments welcome

Simon

[sparkdemon]

yes real time RTMP technology does solve this problem. also embed cue points in your flv file for accuracy of seeking. If you don't use rtmp technology you will experience huge wait time because http progressive download can lay only what has downloaded to buffer.

you can have a look here:
http://flashvisions.com/general/http...isual-example/

for live sample

[sybot]

@ sparkdemon - Thank you for your help on this,

I'm currently looking into online hosting for use online... Is a flash video server hard to setup? Can I do this with the free flash server available from Adobe's website?

do you have any suggestions for offline skipping? Are we really limited to how fast the video can be pulled from the CD? strange to think we have the technology online to skip instantly yet on a cd were forced to wait!

I'm still using the FLV instance offline, using an external FLV with cuepoints to skip through the video. On the harddrive the presentation works flawlessly, yet on the CD were forced to wait several seconds when skipping long distances.

would it be better to use an embedded video? would this make it faster? I noticed when doing some experimenting that I can't cuepoint an embedded video.. which meant it if i had to use actionscript cuepoints, they would not be as accurate!!

any advice welcome, and thanks again

[sybot]

I have another quick question,

Will the basic package available from this server provider http://hosting-marketers.com (videoONE) provide me with an RTMP stream service, that can be picked up in my flash application interface? (I see this is a RED5 server NOT an FMS Server)