Overview
  • 1 Developer
  • Flash 8, XML, FLV.
  • Flex integration.
  • Video upload.
  • OO Design.
  • Bitmap Capture
  • Online video editing.
  • £80k+
Description 

After creating a video editor which could deal with .swf video [see BBC Media Studies], I turned my attention to a video editor which could handle .flv video

The technical difficulties here were higher.  Sure – .flv is designed for video – so what was the problem?
Well first let me tell you what you can do with a swf encoded video.
A swf can be preloaded *very* easily, and once preloaded you can jump to any frame instantly.  This means I can jump with very high accuracy to ‘nth’ of a second.  Indeed at 24fps, every frame is obviously a perfect 1/24th of a second.

FLV’s are by their nature designed to be streamed, and use key frames.  These frames can be seconds apart. Sometimes [depending on encoding quality as much as 10 seconds].  Believe me – this makes presenting a simple editing interface to the user a nightmare.  I don’t want them to have to worry about snapping to keyframes.  Also – whilst a few seconds delay before video starts is more than acceptable in most cases. It’s certainly not when you are stiching video together.

So MashTV was born.  The finished product integrates into a much larger FLEX project.  This actually allows the user to upload their own mobile or camera video to the server.  A server side conversion utility is used to process video content into .flv prior to it being ready to use.

The user has a really simple, cool and intuitive interface to splice their videos and mp3’s together. Whilst they cannot yet actually save their creation to local disc, they can store their movies online and share them with friends.  The movies are reconstucted via XML data.

Taking this project forward – it would be possible to integrate with Media Server, or red5 – and record and edit web camera footage.  It could even be adapted as an online stop motion animation creator.

Screenshots