- Background Info and Recent Examples of Forthcoming Features of Flash MX
- Wagging Tongues and Drooling Mouths Inspire Stopgap Solutions
- A Dynamic Near Real-Time Webcam Delivered via Flash
- Building the Flash-based Webcam Delivery
- Summary of Steps
- Where To Go from Here
- Summary
Wagging Tongues and Drooling Mouths Inspire Stopgap Solutions
Now that I have you salivating about the prospects of what lies ahead, what can you do right now in a similar vein with the documented and available Flash MX toolset? Sure you can take video and import it into Flash MX and export it out to Flash, and even use Sorenson's Squeeze product http://www.sorenson.com/ for even better compression and quality of the video imported into Flash MX. (As an aside, the price on this product just had a drastic reduction in price to help ease adoption by developers: It now lists for $119.) Flash developers around the Net have also figured out the syntax for attaching the video and microphone feeds from a video camera local to the user's machine, and almost everyone has gone through the settings menu in the Flash player and ended up here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/help/settings/. They have even attempted to manipulate the settings dialog itself via this post on Guy Watson's site: http://www.flashguru.co.uk/000011.php. Regardless of all this, right now we can't insert live video on-the-fly dynamically based on a request from a website visitor for a remote camera.
So, until Macromedia decides to reveal its master plan to the world and how to implement such a solution, what can we do in the meantime? Read on for a stopgap solution that has been very effective for me, and is easy to set up and maintain.
Coincidentally, all this salivating and speculation may come to a head very soon. Macromedia has often taken advantage of the extra press and exposure afforded by the FlashForward conferences organized by UDA (United Digital Artists)http://www.uda.com/and Lynda.comhttp://www.flashforward2002.com/to make big announcements about its product line and future technologies. The next event is scheduled from July 1012 in New York. Maybe all our questions and hopes will be answered very soon.