Customizing the FLVPlayback Component

One of the feature upgrades in Flash Professional 8 is the new FLVPlayback component for Flash Video. For those of you who have been waiting for a graphically flexible Flash Video component, the wait is over. The FLVPlayback component offers an expanded ActionScript API and several approaches to graphic customization and skinning.

This article walks you through three approaches available for skinning the FLVPlayback component:

• Choosing prebuilt skins through the Select Skin dialog box
• Using the FLV Playback Custom UI components to mix and match customizable controls
• Creating your own prebuilt skins

Requirements

To make the most of this tutorial, you need the following software and files:

Macromedia Flash Professional 8

The FLVPlayback component comes with Flash Professional 8 along with the new Flash 8 Video Encoder.

Tutorials and sample files:

Although it’s not mandatory in order for you to understand this article, you will most likely want to have a Flash Video (FLV) file on hand so that you can test your skin customizations with a working file. If you don’t have an FLV file on hand, you can use the following URL in the contentPath property of the FLVPlayback component.

• water.flv (FLV, 378K)

Prerequisite Knowledge

This article focuses on customizing the FLVPlayback component using the skinning features.