Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

Alongside the release of Flash Media Server 3.5 this week, we also shipped a Flex-compatible version of the FLVPlayback component.

If you’ve ever looked at the VideoDisplay component in the Flex SDK you’ll know that it’s not exactly feature-packed, so it’s great that we now have an enhanced version – the FLVPlayback component has the following new features:

• Provides skinnable and customisable controls for video playback
• Supports video on demand, live streaming and progressive download
• Compatible with the dynamic streaming and Live DVR features in FMS 3.5

You can download the component from the Adobe website, after logging in with your Adobe ID and accepting the license agreement. Once downloaded and extracted you should add the FLVPlayback_2.5 SWC file to your Flex project (either by adding its location to the project build path or by adding the SWC to the ‘libs’ directory) and then you’re good to go.

The component has been written to be compatible with both Flex and Flash Professional and hence does not extend UIComponent in the Flex framework, so you can’t just use it directly in MXML. Also, you need to be working with Flex SDK 3.2 and (I think) targetting Flash Player 10.

Here’s an example of the code you could use to incorporate the component into your Flex project:

For additional commentry and a complete example project you can use check out Stefan Richter’s post “Using the new FLVPlayback 2.5 component in Flex“.

Video on the Flash Platform just got a whole lot easier for Flex developers with the addition of this new component – while you’re at it, take a look at the new features in FMS 3.5 and download a free development version.