This is a standalone Flash Video Player, allowing you to play videos off of your local system. I was originally
planning on creating something quick and dirty, to have around for testing videos at work. Then some people
found out about it and asked for some features for viewing animation reference footage. Then I decided that it
would be nice to put together a decent design for it. Next thing I knew I had a much larger project on my hands.
The FLV Player has: frame-by-frame moving forward, half and quarter speed playback, horizontal toggling, video
resizing and a metadata list. The frame-by-frame and slow speeds may act a little odd because they're not natively
supported in Flash and I had to rig them to get them to work. There are also hot key commands: space toggles
play and the right arrow advances a frame to the right.
The one problem that can't be overcome, due to Flash's security model, is that the FLV Player needs to reside in the
same directory of any movies that you're trying to play. This is because, when Flash browses to a file through the
system file browser, the only information you're allowed to obtain from the file is its name, not the path to its
location. I looked into doing this project as an Adobe AIR application and, honestly, it was buggy as hell going through
Flash CS3. I think the support is better in CS4, so I'll revisit that when I can upgrade. Right now
I'm limited to using a SWF and working with files in the same directory as the SWF file.
Download FLV Player
Using Firefox
- In Firefox type "About:Cache" into the address bar.
- Get the path of your cache directory in the Disk Cache Device section.
- Browse to that location in Windows Explorer. You'll find a bunch of files with odd names and no extensions.
You'll want to set the view mode to "Detail".
- Navigate to whichever page has the flash video you want to keep.
- Clear FireFox's cache. Go to: Tools > Clear Private Data > Make sure Cache is selected and click
Clear Private Data Now (this step isn't necessary but it makes this process a lot easier). Most of the
files will clear out of your cache folder.
- Refresh the page that has your flash video.
- Wait until the video has completely downloaded and a new file will appear in your cache directory. You'll
be able to tell which one it is because the file size will be significantly larger than everything else in
there.
- Drag that file into whatever location you'd like it to be permanently stored. Rename it to something that makes
sense to you and add the .flv file extension to it.
- You should now be able to open and play the FLV file with the player. Remember that they need to both reside
in the same directory.
Using Internet Explorer 7
- In Internet Explorer go to Tools > Internet Options > Browsing History > Settings > View Files
This will open an Explorer window with a bunch of files in it. You'll want to set the view mode to
"Detail".
- Navigate to whichever page has the flash video you want to keep.
- Clear IE's cache. Go to: Tools > Internet Options > Browsing History > Delete > Delete Files
(this step isn't necessary but it makes this process a lot easier). Most of the files will clear
out of your cache folder.
- Refresh the page that has your flash video.
- Wait until the video has completely downloaded and press F5 to refresh your cache directory. You'll find some
new files in the folder, one of which is your Flash Video. Sometimes it will show up as an FLV file and sometimes
it won't, it seems to depend on how it's delivered off the server. The file will always be there, however,
and you'll be able to tell which one it is because the file size will be significantly larger than everything
else in the directory.
- Whether it's has the flv extension or not, you can now drag it into whatever location you'd like it to be
permanently stored. Rename it to something that makes sense to you and add the .flv file extension if it's missing.
- You should now be able to open and play the FLV file with the player. Remember that they need to both reside
in the same directory.
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