Attached to this posting is a proof-of-concept attempt at using Macromedia Flash to stream closed-captioned video.
The file is based on the one used for the video we are displaying at http://disability.law.uiowa.edu/itworks/online_ed/trainingthedragon.htm. Feel free to download this Flash (.fla) file and experiment with it using your own video and caption files.
We began this project when we realized that different media players create a myriad of problems for closed captioning, partly because of lack of conformance to standards and partly because of lack of robust feature sets (or you could say because of bugs). Also, Flash touts itself as having a very high market share, much higher than any media player.
Further, Flash has gone to some effort to enable the use of video in recent versions, the most recent of which is able to stream from a remote server. We tried HiCaption Flash Extension, which looks to be a very good option for captioning video. However, we weren't able to determine how or whether HiCaption worked with the Flash video controller (media component), and were unable to get an adequate response from Hi Software. Thus, we decided to build our own app. We are using HiCaption for generating time codes in our caption files, however, because it seems to be more stable than MAGpie.
Note that this application has not been thoroughly tested under many circumstances, nor has it been properly coded with error messages to cover many types of errors. Most importantly, since this application requires Flash 7 player, it does not test to be sure that Flash 7 player is installed on the end user's computer so that a graceful prompt for downloading the upgrade can be provided. Macromedia documents different ways this can be accomplished, however.
To use this file, you will need to have Flash MX, possibly 2004, and will need to embed the URLs to your own video and caption files, and set a few other settings, as described in the ActionScript in frame 1. Then publish the file and upload to your server. Note in particular how Macromedia has designed security for this version of Flash. Basically it works best when all the files (including the .swf, the captions, and the video files) reside on the same server (same domain name, not a subweb).
The file (zipped) is about 45 MB and will unzip to about 73 MB. I'm working on the size. The published file (.swf) ends up a little over 100 KB, however, which is very reasonable.
Please feel free to experiment, add features, and test with this application. Let us know your results. If you have questions, you can either post it here or contact me directly (david-klein@uiowa.edu).
Good luck.
Dave Klein
Edited by UBB Administrator (Thu Jun 17 2004 10:02 AM)
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