As you may know, OSMF 1.0 has been release, so one of the first tasks I set for myself was to test the code I wrote in April for OSMF 0.95 (which I posted, along with the screencasts of my talk at FITC, here). And, lo and behold, all of them worked!

Well, all except one. The final demo file, the Full Sample Player was playing, but the video was invisible and all the controls were disabled. So I set out to figure out why. (For those who don't want to read to the end, you can download the updated project file, for Flash CS5, here.)

It wasn't long before I found the culprit. It turns out that the MediaPlayer in OSMF now dispatches the 'ready' MediaPlayerStateChangeEvent when the video is ready to play for the first time — not just when it's ready to play again. So, the result of my last code sample, with OSMF 1.0, was to hide the video and disable the controls — at the start of the video playback! Not what I wanted.

So, if we just remove lines 157 and 158 (seen below), from the _onMediaPlayerStateChange function, the player will work.

case "ready":
	_disableControls ( ) ;
	_cleanUpVideo ( ) ;
	break;

But now, when our video ends, the video doesn't get reset (or 'cleaned up' or however you want to say it) — it looks ugly and doesn't behave how we would expect (because we just removed the code that's supposed to clean up these videos).

So, how do we clean up at the end of a video? Well, you can now listen for the TimeEvent.COMPLETE event on the MediaPlayer instance — when it's fired, the playback of your media is done.

So, if we add this line to the _setupOSMF() function:

_mediaPlayer.addEventListener ( TimeEvent.COMPLETE , _onComplete , false , 0 , true ) ;

…and then declare the _onComplete function, adding back in those two lines we removed from the _onMediaPlayerStateChange function:

private function _onComplete ( evt : TimeEvent ) : void
{
	_disableControls ( ) ;
	_cleanUpVideo ( ) ;
}

One final note… Adobe added in string constants for all of the MediaPlayerStateChangeEvent types, grouped in the new MediaPlayerState class. So instead of comparing against the string, "ready", you can now compare against the string constant of MediaPlayerState.READY. All of them are listed here and have been included in the updated source files that accompany this post.

See you in October at MAX in LA!

And, as always, share and enjoy!

-r

I just received word this morning that Adobe has made me a MAX Master Speaker. This is the inaugural year for the MAX Masters program, and it means that I have had an average rating of at least 4.8/5 from at least 50 MAX attendees.

I consider this designation a real privilege. I take my speaking engagements very seriously, and it is nice to feel that effort rewarded in such a tangible way — especially in the context of a conference like MAX, which has so many high-level speakers.

I'm currently set to run a lab on building OSMF video players, but I believe that I will also be giving my Practical AS3 lecture, as well (the version of that same talk from last year's MAX is viewable here, on Adobe TV).

The MAX Session Scheduler has gone live. Check it out. And see you in November!

-r

On Wednesday, June 9th, Adobe will be hosting a FREE 90-minute session, run by Lisa Larson-Kelley, on the formal launch of the 1.0 version of the Adobe Open Source Media Framework (OSMF). Lisa will also cover the beta release of "Strobe Media Playback," a pre-compiled SWF media player (including source code) based on OSMF.

The invitation is here and you may register here.

[blockquote]In this session, Lisa Larson-Kelley will introduce you to the fundamentals of Open Source Media Framework (OSMF), Adobe’s standard video player libraries for building playback experiences and monetizing video on the web. She’ll give you a high-level overview of why you’d want to use OSMF and what it can do, and then dive into its underlying structure and some simple sample code to get you started. This session is for beginner to intermediate programmers and web developers who want to gain a better understanding of OSMF, and how it can simplify media player development.[/blockquote]

Share and enjoy!

-r

The Synesthesizer is a Flash 10 musical synthesizer that relies on synesthesia-inspired translation metaphors.

I'm only a few short months into what is a very long-term endeavor, and I've had precious few hours to spend on the project in that time, but I always set the benchmark definition of version 1.0 of the synesthesizer as 'a system that produces something approximating music', and even though I haven't invested nearly the amount of time as I'd like, I believe that the current Synesthesizer meets this definition. And thus, I feel I have Synesthesizer 1.0.

The Synesthesizer is a Flash 10 application that translates pictures into music in real-time. What I've included with this post is a rendering of the output of the application — not the Synesthesizer itself. I'll let you judge the quality for yourself — and please feel free to let me know what you think.

Now, of course, there is far more to do here, but what I found most amazing about this process was how easy it was to get to a point of generating 'music' instead of 'sound'. In effect, I apply something along the order of six rules to get to this point. The addition of each rule to the Synesthesizer brings us closer to the generation of music, instead of raw sound.

To get a bit more insight into the Synesthesizer, you should check out my talk, Hearing Pictures, which I'll be presenting at FITC Amsterdam in February and at FITC Toronto in April.

In this talk, I describe the process I followed to get the Synesthesizer to this point. Using the 1943 Hermann Hesse novel, The Glass Bead Game (also published under the title Magister Ludi, the protagonist of the novel, from whom Project Ludi derives its name), as a starting point, and proceeding through a discussion of synesthesia, the aural illusions of Professor Diana Deutsch, the Experiments in Musical Intelligence by Professor David Cope, the music of Tamarin Monkeys, and many other stepping points, I walk through the thought process required to assume an odd endeavor such as the cross-modal translation of pictures into music.

Share and enjoy!

-r

Download the Presentation Files

• All code files (62 flas, and associated AS files)
• Slides used during presentation
• Extended slides for home reference