The Back Room

On more than one occasion, I’ve needed to allow smoothing of video in my Flash projects. Of course, it’s always best to compress video to being the size that you need, but if you want to allow any zoom effects on the video, allow the user to resize it, or maybe create a low-res version for use on the web, you’ll need to enable smoothing on the video. The performance takes a hit, since the computer playing back the content needs to do some math to make the video look good, but if you’re in a controlled environment, or have a reasonable idea of the audience’s install base, then smoothing is a viable option. I’ll mention two methods of playing back video – using the NetStream class, and using the FLVPlayback class. They each require a different method to enable the smoothing.

The NetStream is streaming at its most basic. You create a connection and stream the content. It takes more code to create the netstream (rather than using an FLVPlayback component that’s on the stage already), but it’s a little more clear how to smooth the video, since you just set the smoothing property of whatever your video is true. Here’s how you might stream something with NetStream, with the smoothing part added.


var video:Video = new Video();
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
var ns:NetStream;
//
//Call the function below
startVideo();
//
//This function adds the video elements
function startVideo(){
//Add the video to the stage
addChild(video);
//
//connect the netStream/netConnection with the video
nc.connect(null);
ns = new NetStream(nc);
ns.client = {onMetaData:ns_onMetaData, NetStatusEvent:ns_onPlayStatus};
video.attachNetStream(ns);
ns.play("YOUR_VIDEO.flv");
//
//Start with video being smoothed
video.smoothing = true;
}
//
function ns_onMetaData(_data:Object){
//put stuff here if you want.
}
//
function ns_onPlayStatus(e:NetStatusEvent){
//put other stuff here if you want.
}
//
//See the difference between video being smoothed and not smoothed by
//pressing "s"
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, checkKey);
function checkKey(e:KeyboardEvent):void{
if (e.keyCode == 83){
video.smoothing = !video.smoothing
}
}

So, that’s if you use NetStream to add your video. If you have an FLVPlayback component on your stage, then you have to first extract the video stream from it, and then you can apply smoothing to that. You can’t just set a property of the FLVPlayback, since none exists for smoothing.

function smoothVideo(){
var myVideo = FLVPlayback_Instance.getVideoPlayer(0);
myVideo.smoothing = true;
}