Getting started

ƒlash AV Player is designed to work viewed from a browser with an internet connection.It can be used as a stand alone application but you won't have access to some of the parameters that can be modified from a web page (on Mac OS X, the stand alone player will parse and play local files from your media folder and load individual media)

The basic principle to keep in mind is: The player (the skin file) is called within a page, loads its program (the _pfs.swf file), then loads an XML playlist file holding the path ways to your media subfolders and files. The easiest way to start is just to let the player read your media directory and make its own playlist out of it. You will then be able to customize playlists and build all the categories you want.

Plug and play easy start:
1/ Place the player(s), its hosting html page, and the _pfs.swf file in any chosen/created folder of your hosting server directory.
2/ In this folder create a subfolder, name it "media".
3/ Put "playlist.php" and all your media content (subfolders and files) in the "media" subfolder.
4/ From your favorite web browser, connect to the html page and start streaming.

which will look like:

Customizing your playlist

Now that everything is working you might want to make some other playlists, give a multiple connection choice, put backgrounds and comments to your sound tracks, and create categories that are not obvious from your subfolders tree.
First of all you have to embed the player passing "custom=true" in its url. This will switch the player from reading the auto playlist.php to reading a custom playlist.xml. It will look like : myPlayer.swf?custom=true.
Note: Remember that all (relative) paths are always relative to your media folder hosting your XML playlist.

Here are simple steps to get started (using the Aquavideo Player skin here, as an example -the one just on your left ;-) :

1/ If you intend to have a choice of different encodings, create one subfolder per encoding in your "media" folder". Then, make one version of each media file per encoding (FLV, SWF or MP3), and put it in its corresponding folder (keep the same name for each version).
2/ If you intend to display JPEGs (as an album or/and as backgrounds): create another subfolder in the "media" folder (or the corresponding media subfolder of the playlist), name it "backgrounds", and put in all the JPEGs.

At this point, your files and folder map is all set. Next, comes the playlist that will manage its content.

3/ Now, lets make that XML playlist (what the XML playlist does is to tell the player how you want to list your tracks and how the related files are maped).

a/ Open the av_XML_generator.swf
b/ Choose the "open media directory" option or the "new playlist from scratch" if you want to start from an empty playlist. This brings you to the PLAYLIST menu
c/ Rename playlists by entering new names in their fields. When using the "open directory" option, the generator makes one playlist per subfolder and give it the same name.
d/ GO to the TRACK menu by clicking a playlist.
e/ Enter the name of the track file that should be played as index #1, and eventually: the path (relative to your media folder) of the image you want as a background of this track, and -if different from the name of the track file- the url to load the file from. If you want to write a comment that will display with the track, click the button on the left of the index and enter your comment.
f/ Click the "new track" button and repeat step 6/e for as many tracks as you want to add. At the end you can change tracks orders by "swaping" the lines with the up and down arrows.
g/ GO to the "INFOS" menu.
h/ If your tracks have several encodings, fill in the Kbps choices fields. If your tracks are all MP3s or all JPEGs, change the extension field to the correct value (.mp3 or .jpg).
i/ Your playlist is done.
j/ If you want to add or modify other playlists, GO back to the "PLAYLISTS" menu, click "new playlist" button and repeat steps 6/c to 6/j for as many playlists as you want. At the end you can change playlist orders by "swaping" the lines with the up and down arrows.
k/ GO to the "generate..." menu.
l/ Copypaste the generated code in a text file and name it playlist.xml
m/ Save the file, place it in the "media" folder. Your XML playlist is finished.

4/ You are done. Open the player and play your tracks.

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Example

Lets take an example where you use the Aquavideo player:
1/ You want to broadcast 2 MP3 sound tracks (My Favorite song & My Other Favorite Song) with 3 encoding choices (32 Kbps, 64 Kbps, or 128 Kbps), 2 FLV movie clips (My Favorite Clip & My Other Favorite clip) with 2 encoding choices (Low or Medium) & one comment for each track, and a 4 JPEG pictures Gallery (My Favorite Picture, My Other Favorite Picture, Some Other Favorite Picture, & Some Other Picture).
2/ You want to have 3 playlists (in the following order): My Favorite Sountracks with all your sound tracks, My Favorite Movies with all your movie tracks, & My favorite Images with all your pictures and that you want to have My Favorite Picture as a background of My Favorite Song and My Other Favorite Picture as a background of My Other Favorite Song.
3/ You want the player to connect to the mediumBandwidth folder by default.

Your streaming_folder should loo like this:...

Now, all you have to do is put your AV players folder where ever you want (somewhere in your HD or on any Internet server) and connect to the url of the HTML page in that folder.

Advanced

Variables
that can be passed to the player in the flash object of the HTML page or when enclosed in a movie clip
(variable_1=value_1&variable_2=value2...&variable_n=value_n)

//code in the sending swf sending_av = new LocalConnection(); sending_av.send("av_local", "av_func",func, arg1,arg2,arg3,arg4); // where func is the string reference of one of the bellow functions
functions	description
outsideCtrl(a,b)	where a is the playlist id to jump to and b the track id in that playlist.
prevTrack()	previous track - will reset the player if current track is #1 of the playlist.
nextTrack()	next track - will reset the player if current track is the last track of the playlist.
pressRwdBUT()	rewind the current track.
releaseRwdBUT()	stop rewinding the current track.
pressRwdBUT()	wind the current track.
releaseRwdBUT()	stop winding the current track.
StopControl()	stops and reset the player
PlayControl()	plays the current track
PauseControl()	pause the current
playmode()	switches different playmode

Misc Features

Embeding the player to open in playlist mode
In the embeded <object> of your html page, just pass the variable and value: playlist=true after your player's url.

Dynamic backgrounds
You can change the Color, the Alpha percentage, the x offset, the y offset, the scale factor, and the mask of each skin's designed background. To change these properties, you have to set the BGproperties attribute for each playlist in the playlist.xml OR pass this variable after the url of the player. The format of the BGproperties value is : html color(without the "#"),alpha percentage, x offset, y offset, scale factor, mask ID.

To explain:
BGproperties is made of 6 fields, each separated by comas:
1st field: the html color that will eventually fill in the background object. If the background is an image, the image will be "painted" by that color. So you will only see a fill in color.
2nd field: the alpha (no-transparency) percentage of that background.
3rd field: a horizontal/x position for the background - In some skins, the background image embeded in the player goes beyond the stage area, which means there is room to scroll it to different position.
4th field: a vertical/y position for the background (same as above).
5th field: a scale factor to resize the background graphics. Can have any value starting from 0. This is useful when resizing the player but wanting the background to remane the same so it fits an image background in the HTML page.
6th field: a mask nb starting from 1 (default) to as many mask where implemented in the skin, that will eventually give a different overall shape to the player.
You don't have to fill in all fields if not necessary but you have to leave the comas so the program knows that nothing happens there.

When displaying different settings for each playlist, the Color can set to no_change to remain as the previous setting. If the Alpha is left empty, it will be set to 100 by default. If no value at all is set to BGproperties, then the variable is ignored and all parameters will remain as they are at the time moment. To remove the entire background, you can set BGproperties to BgOff (or just turn its alpha to 0).

Auto Play, Auto Loop, loopTrack, pauseTrack, and randomTrack
To have the player play one specific track from a playlist, you have to set the autoPlay variable in the embed src of the .swf. To be activate, its value should be set to 1. You can also specifie which track to play with the id variable (set to the track number) and which playlist (the PLindex variable). If no id or PLindex is specified the player will play the first id of the first playlist.
You can set the player to Auto Loop, Track Loop, pause at the end of each track, play a random track in the same way by using the autoLoop, loopTrack, pauseTrack and randomTrack variables.

Example for the aquaplayer.swf autoplaying (autoPlay=1) and looping (autoLoop=1) the 3rd track (id=3) of the 2nd playlist (PLindex=2):

Launching the player to play any track from any playlist
You can open the player with a classic popup window java script and have it play the track you want from any chosen playlist. Just pass the correct variables (as seen above) in the window url of the script and use the following script (in the player's page) to embed the player. Just replaceof the classic <object></object> tag by embedPlayer(yourSkinURL,itsWidth,itsHeight,theDesiredBackgroundColor) - if the background color is set to "" it will embed the player as a transparent flash:

When the player is focused you can access main controls withe the keys listed bellow:

_pfs.swf
This is the application file. It is loaded by the skin embeded in your HTML page. This file has to be placed on the first level of your AV folder.

your AV player.swf
This is the player's skin. It is this file that will be called in local or embeded in your HTML page. This file has to be on the same level as the _pfs.swf. Its HTML page also has to be at the same level.

The HTML code that embeds the player (for the aquaplayer.swf as an example) is:

Media files

ƒlash AV Player plays regular mp3 files and sound files or Quicktime movies embeded in a .swf using the Macromedia Flash MX application. These files should be named as you want their title to display. For file names compatibility, white spaces should be replaced by _underscores. So, the names of your files should look like : my_track.swf.
If you want to title your tracks differently from the files, then you should use the url attribute in the XML file. This alternative url can be relative or absolute. The same goes for JPEGs.

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Media subfolders [optional]
The media folder can be divided in different categories in order to manage files as needed. Each playlist will then use the subfolder attribute to find its way to a particular subfolder of the media folder. This can be very helpful to manage different artists or styles on a web site.

Kbps subfolders [optional]
A choice of 3 different Kbps is possible. If you want to make this feature available then you have to:
1/ create as many subfolders as you have different Kbps (max = 3) in your "media" folder.
2/ name these folder as you want.
3/ assign the subfolders names as values to the folderpath attribute of each <KBPS> tags in the XML playlist, and put the labels you want the player to display within the tags.
4/Then, you MUST have one Kbps version for each track and set the defaultKbps variable in the XML playlist for each concerned playlist so the player will know which version to look for by default.

Note:If you don't intend to use several encodings, don't bother using these folders and put your tracks directly in the Track subfolder. You can use the defaultKbps attribute to have the player display what is your Kbps encoding.

the "backgrounds" subfolder [optional]
This is where the player will look for any jpeg or swf graphics attached to a track. Jpeg files must have the ".jpg" extension to be recognized by the player.
Note: It seems that it is not recommended to use a relative url to load the background if the track loading with it has an absolute url - and vice et versa. It is safer to use relative OR absolute urls, but not both at the same time...at least for now.

playlist.xml
This file feeds the player with all necessary playlists informations. It is loaded with the player and can contain several different playlists. The default name of that file is "playlist.xml". You can create different XML playlists (each one being opend by different players) and add a prefix for each one of them (prefix_playlist.xml). Then, you will need to tell the player which prefix to use in order to load the correct XML playlist. This is done with the filePrefX variable in the src parameter of the player.

Example for the aquaplayer.swf playing from john_playlist.xml (filePrefX=john_):

In addition - for the media-pub players only - is another tag named PUB. It lists the path of the commercials that will play in between the tracks.

About XML
An XML file describes the structure of your data. The informations you want to gather about your playlists could be stated this way:
You have a <PLAYLISTdb> data base of several <PLAYLIST>s that eventually have unique attributes (its ID, name, author, subfolder, default Kbps, Xtension, and BGproperties). Each <PLAYLIST> contains <URL> links (just 1 for the time moment), <KBPS> choices, and all the <TRACK>s with their informations (ID, name, img, Url) as well as some attached text. Some attributes are optionals in the way that their information just won't display but without causing malfunction. The most important is informations about pathways and Kbps (which is about the same as pathways since their main function in the playlist IS to give information on the tracks pathway). Here is the resume tag scheme of an XML playlist:

note: Attributes are within the tag and their values are allways between double quotes. Tags must always be closed, either in the form <TAG></TAG> or <TAG />. A non closed tag, or unclosed quote, will fail to load the XML playlist. XML doesn't leave much room for errors, but the player tries to parse the XML in the most flexible way. It also reports some of the common XML file errors. You mostly have to keep in mind that it is case sensitive and to always close quotes and tags.

The detailed template of the XML playlist for AV players goes as follows (texts between <!-- and --> are just comments, they are optional):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<PLAYLISTdb>
<!--begin playlists-->
<PLAYLIST ID="an optional id number if working with a database" name="your playlist name" author="the author" subfolder="the path of an optional media subfolder" defaultKbps="the default Kbps folder to be streamed when the player first loads (or the Kbps to be displayed if no Kbps multichoice is implemented)" Xtension=".mp3 or .swf or .jpg or .jpeg" BGproperties="HTML color (without "#" -labeled undefined if none), Alpha percentage (if not specified, default is 100), x offset, y offset, scale factor, mask ID"/>
<URL Url="a link to be displayed by the player" Target="the target window to open the link">the label of the link</URL>
<KBPS folderpath="name of the folder relative to the media folder">label displayed by the player</KBPS>
<!--begin track list-->
<TRACK ID="an optional id number if working with a database" name="track's name" subfolder="the path of an optional media subfolder" img="an optional swf or jpeg to be displayed with a stand alone sound track -on video players-" Url="relative or or absolute url of the track if different from media[/a KBPS folder]/name + the Xtension" fps="the frame rate of a swf movie if different from 12" >any text to display with the track (available only with Video Players)</TRACK>
<!--track n°2, track n°3, etc...to track N°n -->
</PLAYLIST>
<!-- playlist n°2, playlist n°3, etc... to playlist N°n -->
<!-- Publist (only for media-pub players)-->
<PUB>
<TRACK Url="absolute or relative url (to the root folder - media/PUB/) of the commercial"/>
<!--track n°2, track n°3, etc...to track N°n -->
</PUB>
</PLAYLISTdb>

note: Names of tags are case sensitive, and again all attributes (anything after the equal signs) must be quoted. You don't have to bother leaving empty attributes (anyhow, empty quotes will be interpreted as no attribute).

Eventualy, you can have the player to play only some of the top playlists. The variable having the value of the number of desired top playlists is playlisNb, and the variable for the default playlist you will want the player to open with is PLindex (= the rank of the playlist as displayed by the XML file).

Example for the aquaplayer.swf only playing the first 3 playlists (playlistNb=3) of the playlist.xml and opening with the 2nd playlist (PLindex=2):

XML Playlist-Generator

This playlist editor/generator let you connect to your media folder (or what ever you called your media folder) over the internet or with a local connection. Once you have created or modified a playlist you can either copy-paste the resulting code or download the XML file to your hard drive. Note that downloading is only possible with a third party cgi which address is set when embeding the generator. The embeded variable refering to the cgi is download_cgi.

note: The XML playlist generator only begins with version 1.6 of the AV players.

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for more informations: