Flash Video - Probs with NetStream.onMetaData

Question

So i have created a video player and have noticed something
about the onMetaData function. I have a path to the videos as a
relative path to my .swf file ( myPath = 'media/'; ) and when i
test my movie, the onMetaData function does not get called.
However, when everything is online, or being pulled from an
absolute path ( myPath = '
http://www.mydomain.com/media';
) it is called.
I was just curious as to why that is...?

Answer 1

ewon15,
> well i'm using actionscript 2.0 ... i have not had a
chance
> to dive into AS3.
No worries. :) It just makes a difference in regard to
whatever
snippets or samples would be helpful to you.
> i'm not sure what you mean when you ask me if there is
> metadata in my FLV...
When the FLV file is encoded, it may or may not have
additional
information -- the metadata -- embedded into it. MP3 files,
for example,
mainly contain audio recordings, but they have the capability
of also
containing metadata a such as copyright date, the recording
artist's name,
etc. If your FLV has no metadata, then the
NetStream.onMetaData event won't
be prompted to do anything.
> but the way i know the onMetaData method of the
NetStream
> class was not being dispatched was by the timer and
scrubber
> i set up...plus i put a trace in the method and it was
not outputting
> anything...
Sometimes it helps to trace more than just the value of a
given object.
It's possible, for example, that the trace() is indeed
putting content to
the Output panel, but maybe that content is an empty string.
> here's the gist of my code:
> [lots of code ...]
Aha. So your trace is "hello," which should certainly be
visible in the
Output panel -- provided the FLV file has metadata. That's
good. And
you're saying that everything works with absolute paths, but
not relative
paths? That makes me wonder if the relative path is hitting
the video file
at all. (Of course, it would presumably be obvious if not,
because you
wouldn't see the video at all.)
A quick glance at your code doesn't reveal to me anything
outright
wrong. Some of that code looks like it was suggested by one
of my blog
articles, but I can't be sure of that. (I was going to refer
you to my
blog, but I didn't want to send you on a wild goose chase, if
you'd already
come from there.)
My general approach, when I run into something baffling like
this, is to
isolate the problem area in a separate FLA, so I can study it
without the
distraction of the rest of the code. Here's a quick snippet
from the Help
docs, for example ...
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect(null);
var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
ns.onMetaData = function(infoObject:Object) {
for (var propName:String in infoObject) {
trace(propName + " = " + infoObject[propName]);
ns.play("
http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/water.flv");
Paste that into a new FLV, test the SWF, and see if you get
output in
your Output panel. You should. Then save that new FLA into
the same folder
as your existing work and change the absolute path of that
Adobe file to the
absolute path of one of your own. See if the same sort of
output appears in
your Output panel. It should. If it doesn't, that means your
FLV doesn't
have metadata. If it does, remove the URL portion and see if
it still works
locally for the same FLV (your FLV), but with a relative
path.
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."