videoWindow
June 24th, 2007 . by polyGeek![]() |
Watch video tutorial on creating a videoWindow and it’s features |
The videoWindow is the instance name of the MovieClip you create that will be replaced at runtime to display the video that you have indicated.
In order to tell the videoWindow which video to play you create a dynamic TextField inside the videoWindow and put the path to your FLV, or XML, file in TextField.
The _alpha setting of your videoWindow MovieClip will be applied to your video.
There are four ways to indicate which FLV to play.
1 - by relative path from the swf file that you are working with.
Example: “vids/water.flv”
2 - by using an http address.
Example: “http://polygeek.com/video_tutorials/vids/sea.flv”
3 - by pointing to an XML file that has the necessary data.
Example: “data/videos.xml” or “http://polygeek.com/video_tutorials/vids/videos.xml”
4 - Feature to be reveled soon.
The videoWindow MovieClip gets replaced at runtime with elements inside the SWC. You didn’t actually think a MovieClip could play a video did you?
MovieClips that are placed on the stage at runtime have a higher depth than those at authoring time. (Technically speaking, all objects on the stage at authoring time have large negative depths.) So how would you be able to put something over the videoWindow at authoring time and have it stay there? It’s pretty simple. Just embed the videoWindow inside of another MovieClip. The MovieClip that now holds the vidoeWindow does not need an instance name. Now the graphics that you place over the MovieClip that is holding the videoWindow will stay on top of the videoWindow.
If this seems nonsensical and bewildering then welcome to the world of depth management in Flash. ![]()

