Encoding Flash Video : This is a must read if you’re doing Flash video. The authors have lots of tips on what settings to use for encoding based on lots of experience.

And this is a great table for choosing the right bit-rate to video dimensions settings.

Over the past few months I’ve had lots of requests for new features to add to video.Maru - see below. I plan to make a push to get all the current requests rolled in by the end of the month and release video.Maru version 2.0. If you have any requests now’s the time! Otherwise it will have to wait for 3.0 which may be a while.

Additionally I need to do some work to make video.Maru compatible with the Flash 9/CS3 IDE. It doesn’t allow for certain characters in instance names that the Flash 8 IDE did so there is some work to be done there. (Note: this does not mean I’m rewriting the code in AS3.) I’m not sure when or if that’s going to happen.

Planned Updates:

1. Updates to make compatible with Flash 9/CS3 IDE
   • Instance name of play button will become play_btn.
   • Instance name of stop button will become stop_btn.
   • Work around for the fact that “/” and “.” characters cannot be used in instance names which makes it impossible to make the videoWindow have the instance name of “vids/myVideo.flv”
2. fullscreen button
3. Download progress TextField
4. API to work with dynamically created content
5. Add XML attribute to make the video automatically play the next video
6. Add XML attribute to loop a video.
7. Add XML attribute to describe the video.
8. Add XML attribute to show the length of the video.
9. Add XML attribute to display a thumbnail picture.
10. Add a buffer% controls in addition to buffer#. (I’m not certain this will make it in. We’ll see.)
11. Add a ‘buffering’ MovieClip that is only visible when the video is buffering.

Known bugs:

1. The playhead cannot be dragged past the point that the downloadProgress reached when it is pressed.
2. The playhead automatically plays video after dragging is complete but it doesn’t toggle the play button to the pause state if had been paused before dragging the playhead. (Yeah, this sounds confusing but trust me, it’s a small bug and can easily be fixed.)

Planned Examples:

I also plan on releasing lots of examples of the various capabilities that video.Maru offers. Such as:

1. how to create a dropDown navigation for your movies
2. how to create animated play, stop, volume, etc buttons.
3. how to add graphics on top of the videoWindow

Let me know if there’s anything else you would like. And if you request something that video.Maru already does then you will get a RTFM (Read The Fraking Manual) response!