Note: Flix
Pro will automatically output your video in a
custom player or add a player to virtually any
SWF produced by Macromedia Flash and any third
party Flash exporting software.
This
tutorial will cover how to customize this jukebox
so you can offer your users a custom-branded
player that will handle both audio and video
files. You can also use elements of the accompanying
.FLA file to create your own audio/video player
from scratch. You just need to understand the
techniques used in the creation of this one.
This jukebox is much like the preloader shell
that accompanies the Flix Video Preloader Shell
Tutorial. It is essentially a mechanism for loading
movies. However, it is a bit more advanced in
the respect that it provides both additional
information about the videos themselves using
variables encoded by Flix and also more selections
to choose from. In addition to three audio tracks
and three videos, you also have a selection of
bandwidth to accommodate users on both 56k and
256k connections.
It also offers a way for users to purchase the
DVD of the movie featured by the player. In the
case of this example, we are using Jonathan Blank's
movie Sex, Drugs & Democracy, which was recently
released on DVD as a basis for showing you how
to integrate a theme into the player interface.
In
relation to the .FLA file that accompanies this
tutorial, something I tried to do is make it
a little easier to identify the most important
elements that you will want to modify when customizing
this jukebox for your own projects. I have placed
three little arrows (">>>")
before the names on the layers that contain things
such as the information clips that return information
on the loading selection, the Title, Author,
and Description clips that display information
about the currently playing selection, the bandwidth
clips, the Links Clip, the layer that contains
the loading animation so you can customize it
if you wish, and so on.
You could also think of the layers marked with
this symbol as those that I believe you would
benefit from looking into to see how they function.
This means going into the symbol itself, looking
at the actions, determining their targets, and
understanding why they do what they do. Many
of these involve the use of variables to communicate
with other parts of the Flash movie. Learning
more about how these elements interact with one
another will greatly increase your ability to
make more complex and interactive experiences
for your users. This jukebox in particular makes
use of many different techniques that can be
used over and over again to enhance all of your
future projects. The ability to load movies into
targeted clips and control their function, and
being able to use variables to display and keep
track of information will serve you well. By
studying the .FLA and this tutorial you can also
learn more about dynamic text fields, mask layers,
and more.
The screenshot below depicts the main timeline
of the accompanying .FLA. As you can see, most
of the action takes place in the second half
of the movie. The first 40 frames are just the
various jukebox elements getting tweened in.
This also a number of things going on behind
the scenes, however, and this is why you will
want to explore the .FLA and pull it apart to
see what it's made of. If you are just looking
for quick functionality though, you can just
focus on changing the graphics and replacing
the videos with your own. I provide a lot of
extra information in the spirit of helping Flash
designers to develop their skills, but it really
is just that easy if you want it to be. In most
cases, just keep double-clicking things on the
stage, going through the hierarchy of symbols
until you reach the root symbol. You can then
make whatever modifications you require.
Sit
back, grab a cup of coffee and invest some time
in your skills. Take a look at the techniques
and methods used in this project and think about
how you could apply them to other projects. Or
just take the barebones approach and quickly
customize the graphics of this player to get
up and running right away. But most of all, have
fun...revel in the grand quest for knowledge
and Flash enlightenment! :)
We'll
jump right into it with a discussion of what
we will be offering the user in the way of selections.
Each one of the selections has two different
versions...one for 56k connections and one for
256k connections. This means that each video
was encoded twice from Flix, with each one using
a different preset encoding setting. Other than
adding the link info and other variables for
the Title, Author and Description, there are
a couple of other changes I made to the preset
settings.
The first is found under the SWF tab. I checked
the box that adds a black frame at the start
of the video and I also checked the box next
to "STOP action on first frame". What
this does is to keep the video on the first frame
until we are ready for it to play and explicitly
tell it to do so. The "Insert black frame
at start" prevents the first frame of the
video itself from displaying while it is loading.
The other modification I made was to the 256k
settings. I increased the "Maximum bitrate
(kbps)" from 242 to 280. This made for a
cleaner video and for high bandwidth users it
should still stream much the same as the original
setting.
In order to get your clip information to show
up in the jukebox when each selection is played,
you will need to encode variables for TITLE,
AUTHOR and DESCRIPTION into each of your movies.
This is an easy process, you simply type in the
variable name and corresponding value and then
hit the Add button. You want to do this for each
of the three variables for each movie.
Another
thing you will notice if you use the standard
settings is that the 56k setting and the 256k
video setting have different default custom SWF
dimensions. This is to account for the smaller "pipe" that
low bandwidth users have for transferring data
from the internet. The smaller size of the 56k
video setting allows for a higher quality while
still retaining the ability to stream efficiently
over slower connections. This will come into
play more a little later when we discuss the
Bandwidth Clips and what they do to account for
the difference in size between the two bandwidth
selection possibilities.
Two
different movies were created for each audio
track...one for 56k playback and one for 256k
playback. There are a couple of things that make
these two files different from one another. If
you add any graphics to your audio tracks, you
will probably want to change the movie dimensions
to match the smaller size of the 56k video. This
is to account for the fact that the 56k video
needs to be encoded at a smaller size to retain
quality while streaming the video at the lower
bandwidth. We also center the loaded video in
the playback window of the jukebox, so if you
don't change the size of your 56k audio tracks,
your graphics will be offset down and to the
right inside the playback window. I have included
just a very simple animated line form, but I'm
sure you can impress me with something far more
creative. You can display a logo or perhaps some
additional information about the track and a
link to buy the selection on CD.
The second thing I changed was the compression
settings for the Audio Stream found under the
Flash tab in the Publish Settings. For the 56k
audio, I used lower quality settings than I did
for the 256k version. I recommend that you experiment
with the settings until you get a good balance
between file size and sound quality. You can
see the sound export settings that I used in
each movie by hitting Ctrl+Shift+F12 to bring
up the Publish Settings. The settings for the
sound are found under the Flash tab near the
bottom where it says "Audio Stream". You can
check the box next to "Override sound settings" to
have these settings take precedence over any
settings you have made to the sound itself by
double-clicking the sound in the Library.
Your bit rate is also a major factor in both
the quality and size of your published movie.
Depending on how your movie streams though, simple
file size may not be a factor. When you set a
sound to "Stream" using the Sound Panel, Flash
breaks up the sound into individual frames.
This allows you to do a couple of things. First,
it lets you set up actions to stop your movie
at any point during playback and it will resume
playing exactly where it left off when you tell
it to start playing again. Secondly, it allows
you to efficiently "stream" your movie over the
internet. What this means is that instead of
waiting for an entire sound to load, as is the
case when you have the sound set to either "Start" or "Event" in
the Sound Panel, you can start playing your movie
right away. This is because the sound has been
broken up into small chunks that can easily be
fed to users on slower connections.
The same can be said for any Flash movie. That
is why Flix comes with presets for different
connection speeds. Flix will optimize the video
during the encoding process so that it will stream
efficiently over the desired connection speed.
This
would be a good time to discuss the part that
streaming plays in the preloading process. Set
up properly, a Flash movie will stream over even
slow internet connections without any delay whatsoever.
It is, in fact, primarily what Flash was created
for...to stream compact graphics and animations
(and now with Flix you can easily incorporate
video as well) over even 28k and 56k connections.
This is accomplished by making sure that each
individual frame does not exceed a certain size.
The amount of information that each frame can
contain and still stream efficiently is determined
by the bandwidth of your users.
The screenshot below shows you the Bandwidth
Profiler that can be accessed while in Test Movie
mode in Flash. This will show you how your movie
will stream over whatever connection speed you
specify. You can hit Ctrl+Enter to go into Test
Movie mode and then hit Ctrl+Enter again to "Show
Streaming". If you can't see the Bandwidth
Profiler, then hitting Ctrl+B will bring it up.
Like
everything else though, there are some other
things to consider. In the case of Flix-encoded
videos that include play controls, there can
sometimes be a problem if a user holds down the
fast forward button while the movie is still
loading because they have now effectively requested
that the speed of data transfer be increased
by about four times what it is when streaming
normally. When the video reaches a point where
there is no information because the rest of the
movie hasn't loaded yet, it can sometimes cause
the Flash Player to crash. Since your users are
usually viewing your video on the internet through
the Flash Player plug-in for Netscape or the
Active-X Control for Internet Explorer, this
means that it can also bring their browser down
with it.
In an effort to avoid this occurrence, (you never
know what people are going to do and when they
might press what) many of the example FLAs found
on the Wildform site in the tutorial section
do not begin playback until somewhere between
60 and 90 percent of the movie has loaded.
However, in light of the information above pertaining
to the streaming capabilities of Flash, making
your users wait is not strictly necessary. You
can, if you wish, have your video start playing
right away. This is the case with the Wildform
video banner ads that you may have seen. If you
use the preset settings that are in the Presets
drop-down box on the File tab in Flix, then Flix
will automatically encode your video to stream
fluidly over the indicated connection speed.
Not taking into account any of the graphics or
elements associated with the player itself, this
means that in a perfect world you can have your
video start playing right away and it will stream
in a manner that enables even low bandwidth users
to have a seamless viewing experience.
All you would have to do in order to get the
video to start playing right away would be to
clear the keyframe that contains the action that
checks to see if the movie has been 30 percent
loaded or not. The frame that contains this "if" statement
and the statement itself are discussed in more
depth a little later on under the subheading
of "It's All A Matter Of Timing...".
The Solution
We have also added another little piece of functionality
that addresses the fast forwarding issue. We
have made it so the fast forward button is grayed
out and inactive until the movie has fully loaded.
The fast forward button is actually a button
inside of a movie clip. This was accomplished
by inserting a frame at the beginning of the
timeline for the fast forward movie clip and
adding a stop action. I also adjusted the alpha
settings for the button and the arrows to indicate
that the button was inactive and removed the
actions from the instance of the button itself.
Once
the movie is 100% loaded, a separate movie clip
(the "Fully Loaded Check Clip" as it
is named in the layers of the .FLA on the main
timeline) with a simple set of actions that checks
that one property will do two things. First it
will target the fast forward movie clip and send
it to the second frame where the button becomes
active. The second thing it does is to target
the main timeline and send the playhead to the
next frame. To reset the fast forward button
back to the inactive state, I have placed an
action on each one of the selection buttons that
targets the fast forward clip and tells it to
go to frame 1 and stop.
I have also added a keyframe to the timeline
where it begins playback of the video on the
layer that houses the information clips. In this
new keyframe I have deleted the File Size Clip
and made the Percent Loaded Clip somewhat transparent. This
allows you to see how much of the movie has yet
to load while keeping the information discreetly
in the background. If you wish, you can modify
this so the Percent Loaded Clip does not exist
after the video starts, just remove all of the
frames after frame 77 in the "Info Clips" layer.
You will have to make the call, though. Consider
the scope of your project and the use to which
it will be put. I would recommend preloading
only the minimum amount to ensure consistent
quality playback. Experiment with preloading
different amounts until you find the optimal
setting for your particular project.
The Loading Mechanism
Below is a screenshot of the main timeline and
it depicts the part of the timeline that loads
and checks the progress of the videos and audio
tracks as they are loading. Everything that happens
before frame 40 where the screenshot starts is
just the jukebox elements loading. The first
two frames that contain actions that you can
see in the screenshot are only "stop" actions.
They first stop the playhead to allow the user
to select a bandwidth, and then stop it again
to allow them to choose one of the selections.
Frame 50 is where the command to load the selected
movie is issued. Below is the code that strings
together the two variables..."selection" and "band"...and
then loads the appropriate movie. In order
for this to work, it is important that the URL
that is specified in the Actions Panel is checked
as an expression. That is the little box just
to the right of where you input the URL itself.
You have to tell Flash that it needs to put together
several elements to get the complete URL. Also,
don't forget to include all the required quotes.
The URL in the example starts out with the address
to the folder on the Wildform server where all
of the files related to this jukebox are posted.
They are in a directory called "Rush",
which is in a directory called "videos".
You are going to want to change this to reflect
the location of the files on your server.
The next part is where the values for the variables "selection" and "band" are
added together and appended to "juke_",
then we stick the ".swf" file extension
onto the end of that. So, if a 56k user has chosen
video number one, then the file that would be
loaded would be "juke_video1_56k_.swf".
loadMovie ("http://www.wildform.com/videos/Rush/juke_" add
selection add "_" add band add".swf", "screen");
Since this jukebox makes use of videos that were
encoded using the standard presets from Flix,
you can encode your own videos using the same
settings and just name your movies appropriately
and point the jukebox to the ones on your hard
drive or server to have them working right away.
"It's All A Matter Of Timing..."
The frame that is highlighted in the screenshot
contains the actions that determine when the
video will start playing. What this set of actions
is doing is checking the value of the "percentLoaded" variable
that resides in the "percentLoadedClip".
The percentLoaded variable is being determined
by another set of actions inside the "percentLoadedClip".
Both the "percentLoadedClip" (instance
name of the clip) and the actions below are on
the main timeline, while the variable itself
is scoped (active in only the specified timeline,
which in this case is the percentLoaded Clip)
to it's own timeline, so the variable is addressed
by first specifying the instance name of the
clip and then the name of the variable itself.
Note: The previous information
about scoping variables to specific timelines
is one to snake away in a conveniently accessible
corner of your mind. If you have tried working
with variables with little success in the past,
then this may have been one of the more confusing
aspects of variables that contributed to your
failure and subsequent inevitable frustration.
As an example, if you were to scope a variable
to the main timeline, then it would be specified
thusly: "_root.yourvariable" or "_level0.yourvariable".
Scoping your variables to the main timeline can
sometimes make it easier to keep track of and
target them.
If you were targeting a variable that has been
scoped to a specific timeline, then you would
do so in this fashion: "_root.clipinstancename.yourvariable".
If the clip in which your variable was scoped
was on the main timeline and the action that
targeted that variable was also on the same timeline,
then you could lose the "_root" part
of it and just specify "clipinstancename.yourvariable".
To further assist you in troubleshooting your
variables, you can enter Test Mode by hitting
Ctrl+R and then hitting Ctrl+Alt+V to list all
of the variables currently active in your movie.
The
playhead then enters a sequence where it will
check to see if the movie has actually begun
loading before continuing on to check and display
exactly how much has loaded. It does this by
checking the "_width" property of the
empty clip that the movies get loaded into. Once
the _width is greater than zero, it means that
the movie has begun loading. This is based on
the fact that as far as Flash is concerned, the
_width of an empty movie clip is zero, and once
the movie has begun loading this is no longer
true.
Now the reason we have to do this is to account
for the meaningless values that are returned
to the Information Clips that gather the info
on how much of the movie has loaded. If there
is no movie to return information on, as is the
case in the brief seconds between the time the
loadMovie command is issued and the when the
movie actually starts loading, then Flash returns
a value that is interpreted as "NaN",
or "not a number". Apparently Flash
takes this for a valid argument that the movie
has been sufficiently loaded and continues on
before we are prepared for it to do so. Thus
we make the movie wait until the movie has actually
begun loading to start the next sequence on the
timeline that contains the Information Clips,
which can now function as they should.
So now we have told Flash which selection to
load and at what bandwidth, and we have made
sure that there is a movie cued up in the empty
clip. The next thing that happens is that if
30 percent of the video has loaded, then the
playhead will be sent forward to the frame label "turn_on" and
the cover for the play controls will slide up.
In this jukebox I don't expose the play controls
until the selection is ready to play. I don't
see any point in confusing people with non-existent
functionality and there is the possibility of
code conflicts if you try to target something
that is not there at the time the command is
issued.
If the loading movie has not yet reached
30 percent, then the playhead will be sent back
to the frame label "showStatus" and
it will continue to show the progress in both
the percentLoaded text field and in the progress
bar. Depending on how you set up your movie,
you may not want to include the progress bar
at all. I have included it for those who want
to use it, and as I am fond of saying, the elements
included in these tutorials and the accompanying
.FLAs can be used in just about any project,
not just for preloading video and a progress
bar is something that every Flash designer should
have in his toolbox.
As far as preloading the graphics and other elements
of the jukebox itself, I chose to use layers
and frame placement to determine how much of
the movie loads at what time and in what order.
The order that the layers load in is determined
in the Publish Settings under the Flash tab.
It's the first thing you see at the top of the
dialogue box and the default setting is for it
to load from the bottom up. Also, since the layers
load from the bottom up, you want to have the
layer that contains your actions to be the bottom
layer. That way your actions are the first thing
that will execute when the playhead enters any
given frame.
There were several chunks that couldn't be broken
up into small enough pieces to stream perfectly,
though. At these points I added a small "loading" animation
that gives users an indication that something
more is coming down the pipe for their viewing
pleasure.
As mentioned in the Preloader section, you can
see the file size of each individual frame by
hitting Ctrl+Enter while in authoring mode to
test your movie. Hitting Ctrl+Enter again will "Show
Streaming", and depending on the setting
you choose in the Debug menu, it will show you
how your movie will stream over the desired connection
speed. If the Bandwidth Profiler is not visible,
you can show it by hitting Ctrl+B or going to
View>Bandwidth Profiler. It is the Bandwidth
Profiler that has the breakdown of each individual
frame in your movie and it's file size. You will
also note that the little arrow indicator at
the top of the timeline will simulate the progress
of your movie as it streams at the chosen bandwidth.
These
are pretty self-explanatory. They allow the user
to choose between six different selections...three
videos and three audio tracks. You can set up
pretty much as many buttons as you like, however.
Just keep naming them sequentially as far as
which video that load...video4, video5, video6,
etc. That value will be set as the variable "selection" and
it will load the appropriate movie.
The actions that are placed on the buttons is
very simple and straight forward. Each button
does three things. The first is to set
the variable "selection" to the appropriate
value for the chosen selection. The second thing
they do is send the playhead to frame 50 on the
main timeline by targeting the frame label "loadSelection".
This is also the frame that has the actual command
to load the movie, so make a mental note because
this is where you will have to specify a new
path to your videos on your server instead of
the one on the Wildform server. The last thing
the buttons do is reset the fast forward button
so that is will once again be disabled until
the next video has been fully loaded. This is
done by targeting the instance name of the clip
and then telling the playhead to stop on the
frame labeled "off", which is the first
frame of the clip.
You
can see the Change Bandwidth Clip in the screenshot
above that allows users to change their desired
connection speed. There are actually two different
bandwidth clips. The one pictured above, called
the "Change Bandwidth Clip" and the
one that appears before they have made their
selection, which is appropriately enough called
the "Select Bandwidth Clip". There
are two different clips because depending on
where you are on the timeline, each needs to
have a slightly different behavior and a separate
set of actions.
Each one of the bandwidth buttons does several
different things. One of the things they do is
to set the x and y position of the empty clip
to account for the difference in size between
the videos for 256k users and the videos for
56k users. The size of the 256k encoded video
is 240x180 and the size of the 56k encoded video
is 150x112. It looks a lot better for the smaller
video to play in the center of the viewing area
than it does for it to be pushed up in the upper
left hand corner. In regard to using this technique
in general, keep in mind that all loaded movies
in Flash get positioned with their upper left
corner lining up with the center of the empty
clip that they are getting loaded into.
The next thing they do is to set the value for
the variable "band". This will be either "56k" or "256k".
Finally, the last thing they do is to target
a frame on the main timeline and tell it to play.
Which frame is targeted depends on where you
want them to go and at what time. In the case
of the Select Bandwidth Clip, I take the user
to where they can make their selection. In the
case of the Change Bandwidth Clip, I have the
playhead move to the frame that actually loads
the movie because at this point they have likely
already made a selection and they just want to
change their bandwidth. On the off chance that
they have not yet made a selection and are just
pushing buttons for the sheer love of doing so,
I have set the variable for "selection" to "video1" on
the main timeline so there will be a default
value for when Flash is looking for which movie
to load.
The
Change Bandwidth Clip does much the same thing
as the Select Bandwidth Clip, but it sends the
playhead to the frame label "loadSelection" and
tells it to play, which will automatically load
the current selection at the new bandwidth instead
of sending it to the frame label "selectMedia" and
having it play, which opens up the cover over
the selection buttons.
These next couple of screens show you the actions
associated with the two buttons in the Change
Bandwidth Clip. You'll notice that the timing
of when these actions execute is such that the
first thing that happens is that we set the value
for the variable "band". This happens
first because we have it set to occur "on(press)".
This means that the action will execute as soon
as the user clicks down on the button. The other
actions do not occur until the user releases
the button. You want to be careful about giving
Flash too many commands all at once if there
is any chance of them conflicting with one another.
Since the next set of actions take me to the
frame on the timeline that has the action that
loads the video, and that action is dependent
on the "band" variable, I wanted to
make sure that the variable was set to the proper
value before it got to the action that required
it.
The
playback and volume controls allow the user more
control over their viewing experience. Each of
these is a separate movie clip, but they all
reside on one layer. These are placed beneath
a cover that will slide up once the movie has
begun to play. The mask for the cover was made
by copying and pasting the symbol of the cover
itself in a layer above it, right-clicking and
choosing "Mask". I then animated the
cover so that it slides up to reveal the play
controls.
This jukebox has another distinctive feature
that relates to providing your users with a reliable
viewing experience.
These
are modular play controls, which means that you
can copy and paste these controls into another
Flash movie and they will function exactly as
they do in this one. They just need to be on
the same timeline as the empty clip that you
load the movies into, and the empty clip needs
to have an instance name of "screen".
Inside
the jukebox console, which has an instance name
of "console", there are several movie
clips that display the descriptive information
about the selection that is currently playing.
These are the TITLE, AUTHOR, and DESCRIPTION
clips. Just keep double-clicking these
to get into the symbols where you can edit the
text and the accompanying text fields if you
want to change the information that is displayed
The
Links Clip is a separate movie clip that slides
up to cover the Wildform logo on the bottom right
of the jukebox console. I did it in this fashion
to make the most of the available screen space
in the player. This will allow you to link to
external sites so your viewers can purchase the
videos and CDs that the trailers represent. This
one includes a link to buy the DVD at amazon.com,
a link to visit the web site that is dedicated
to the movie, a link to the production company
that produced the movie, and a link to the company
that is actually releasing the movie. This allows
viewers to not only purchase the DVD, but also
to get more information and read some reviews
before making their decision.
The
placement of this clip could present a problem
if you are not careful. What we are working with
here is the way Flash handles buttons in movie
clips. There is nothing wrong with their function,
rather the opposite, they function perhaps too
well. If a button is on the timeline at any given
point, then it is always going to be active,
even if it is completely obscured by other elements
on the stage. So, the problem we run into in
this project is that the Wildform logo has an
invisible button (that's what the turquoise-colored
thing is that you see when you open up the .FLA
file) behind it that links to the Wildform web
site. The hit frame, or active area, of this
button covers pretty much the exact same space
that the Links Clip occupies when it is active.
When it is inactive it is positioned lower, outside
the masked area, and thus does not interfere
with the Wildform logo button.
However, when the Links Clip opens up, we now
have buttons covering buttons and this could
get ugly if you are not careful in how you set
up the hit frames for your buttons. To access
the Links Clip and see how they are set up you
first need to find either the little white circle
if it is inactive, or the crosshairs if it is
active, that represents this clip and either
double-click it or right-click it and choose "Edit
in Place". This will be in the approximate
center of the Wildform and jukebox logo. Since
there is nothing but a stop action in the first
frame, this will be the only indication of this
clip's existence on the stage. If you have trouble
finding it, you can select the layer that contains
this clip and toggle the visibility on and off
while you watch the stage.
Once you get into the first movie clip, which
has an instance name of "linksclip",
you will see a timeline that represents the opening
and closing animations of the Links Clip sliding
into place. The symbol that is tweened in this
timeline does not have an instance name since
we don't have to target it, but the name of the
symbol in the Library is "Links Clip Parts".
Select frame 8 where the links have slid up into
place over the Wildform logo. This is so you
can see the relationship between the hit frames
of the two buttons. I have taken you into the
symbol this way, by editing it in place, because
I usually like to see the symbol that I am editing
in relation to everything else on the stage.
I have set up the hit frames for these buttons
in such a way that they completely cover the
hit frame for the Wildform logo and still don't
interfere with one another. I have left only
the smallest of gaps between the hit frames to
ensure this.
If you are using clips from more than one source
and you want the links to always pertain to the
currently playing selection, you can either create
multiple clips and use variables to determine
which links clip opens up at any given time or
you can use dynamic text fields with urls that
link to the appropriate site. It would be the
same process for setting a variable, checking
to see which one is active, and displaying the
appropriate information, much like the way the
jukebox determines which video to play depending
both on which bandwidth was chosen and the actual
selection that was made.
It is my intention with these tutorials to empower
you to use Flix and Flash to create innumerable
projects using a toolset of useful techniques
along with a healthy dose of personal creativity
and ingenuity. It is my hope that you take
the time to understand the concepts at work in
this jukebox and apply them in a new and inventive
fashion. This is the beginning of the path. Where
it leads is up to you.
This
tutorial and .fla was written for Flash 5. The
.fla will work in Flash MX with minor modifications.
Flash MX does not like the name of the variable "selection".
So you will need to change the name of this variable.
This is the variable that determines which file
to load. There are eight places that you have
to change this variable.
Frame 40 in the "Variables" layer
- this frame action sets the variable "selection" to
the default value of "video1".
Select that frame in the timeline and then
change the value in the Actions Panel (F9).
Each of the six buttons
also sets the value for this variable. Select
each of the buttons on frame 40 and change
the value of the variables to the same one
you selected in step 1.
Frame 50 in the "Actions" layer.
This frame action loads the user-specified
selection, using the variable "selection".
Select the frame in the timeline and then
find the part that says "selection" and
change it to the new name of your variable.
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If you are not completely satisfied with our Flash multimedia software
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