Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

[Geoffh]

Once I get this figured out it'll be plane sailing.

I am using my Swish (saved as flash) text animation menu to start a number of avi videos.

I've put FS Commands in the animation file.
I'm using a single page in AMS4
The Flash animated menu is the top layer and automatically plays first .
I have imported an avi file (camtasia screen capture using TSCC codec) into the single page. I was planning to have 6 - 9 short avi's on the same page.

On the Flash animations actions tab I have put in an
IF %FSCommand% = "PLAY T1C1"
Then on the next line I inserted a play avi object and then an ENF IF.

The problem is, when I preview the project I get an error message after clicking the approriate menu that says it cannot find the requested avi on that page.
The FSCommand is probably working but it looks like I am doing something wrong with the avi file?

Hope you can help.
Regards
Geoff

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

you must likely have to include a page.showobject YOUR_AVI since the flash object would be on top of it to start.

However, there are issues with flash objects, web objects, avi objects and other objects that are associated with external programs in that they don't really like to not be on top. So you may have problems. Your best solution as far as i can figure, is to include the avis in your swf. This way you're only using a flash object and not having to deal with AVI or even anything else from APM.

I defer to anyone who knows more than me though.

[Geoffh]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

Thanks for your relpy

I tried another way. I put the avi on another page and then used an FSCommand in the Flash menu to JUMP to that page.

It works really well. The problem I am having now is with getting back to the Flash menu when the video is finished.
When the video finishes playing it will jump back to the page with the Flash menu on but I want it to go to a particular frame in the Flash movie. I tried using a SEEK command but couldn't get it to work. Any thoughts on SEEK?

Geoff

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

Seek has always worked fine for me. What's going wrong?

[Geoffh]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

I use these commands to getback to the Flash animation:

Page.Jump("page1")
%Property% FlashOject("Flash1")Get Property ("filename")
FlashObject("Flash1").Seek (609)

What happens is that it goes back to page1 but not to frame 609. It just sits on the first frame of the Flash animation.

Geoff

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

I'm not sure what your second line of commands is for. But maybe that is screwing it up. Have you tried just the page jump, the seek and then (very important) a play command for the flash object?

[Corey]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

To do this you need to hide all your AVIs on page initialize and then show them as need be during the presentation. You cannot stakc objects unless they are hidden. If you have a stack of objects you can only show one at a time, you need to be careful to keep the rest hidden.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Geoffh]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

I have a hunch about whats happening.
The jump command jumps to the page I want it to go to right away, so it probably cannot execute the SEEK command as its already jumped to that other page. The seek command was on the page it was leaving.

This is a guess.

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

that sounds right I had that problem once too. What you can do to fix it is set the AVI on complete to first set a variable like SEEN_AVI = true then jump back to your flash page.
On the flash page properties, create an on initialize action to something like
IF
SEEN_AVI = true
seek the right frame
END IF

This way you can have different if statements for each avi you want to play as long as you set each to a different variable. And you'd also want to set an on close action to reset all your variables to false or you could run into problems.

I think you can also use the built in lastpage variable, but I've never done it that way before.

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

looking at your previous post, i think you may have been trying to do the variable thing i was mentioning, but you'd want to do it before the page jump and probably give it a more unique name than property.

[Corey]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

Whoa, whoa, this is much, much easier than all this guys. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] You don't need the second page even. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] It's not a good practice to get into a windy road of workarounds and catch basins like this, better practice is to approach the project from a more basic standpoint and just get the details right. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

I'll whip up a demo for you today and post it here which uses one page and only a handful of actions to do what you need.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Geoffh]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

Thanks Corey
I'm really stuck. I've had some success with a workaround but then I run into another issue. However I have tried stacking avi's and the Flash together, and being sure to hide and unhide. But its still not finding the avi's on the single page. ahhhh! I am sure its probably something I am doing or not doing.

Geoff

[Corey]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

OK so I made a project for you to check out. It has 3 .avis and a flash object on one page. The flash object is an intro and then menu (3 buttons, each with a numerical fscommand, i.e. 1, 2, 3) which only plays the intro once, it's buttons act to launch the avis. Each avi restores the flash menu upon completion. There are better ways to do this, i.e. having your intro .swf load the menu .swf into itself after the intro, this way all future references to that .swf would be to the menu, no seek would be needed, you could just show and hide it. But I did it this way so that you can fit what I'm showing you into the way you are doing things in the hopes that it would be easy to use and more relevant to you. Like I say you could simplify this to do this with one media player object too, but this way is quicker and easier to learn so that's why I did it like this.

Note look for actions on these events when you are looking at this file (.fla source included too):

PAGE - On Initialize
PAGE - On Show
AVIs - On End Stream
Flash - On FS Command

File is here, good luck. If you have any questions post them to this thread, no need to start more new threads for this question. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

http://www.indigorose.com/temp_web/avis.zip

P.S. notice the whole project only takes a single page and about a dozen actions or so total. The least the better I always figure... That way if something breaks or you need to come back and edit/add something, it's nice and easy.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[yoni]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

you're right. the simpler the better. But I still think there's a certain charm to building a project like you would one of those complicated mousetraps in the board game. Up to the point when it affects functionalisty (:

[Geoffh]

Re: Error message: "Can't find avi on page"

Corey when I try this demo I get this error message shown below every time. If I try to add the commands you used in your demo for my project I get the same error message.

PROGRAM ERROR
ams4test.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows. You will need to restart the program.

An error log is being generated.


I have rebooted the OS and tried multiple times, it always does the same thing. I tried re-installing AMS4 but no luck there, still the same error message when I click on the button to play the avi while the project is previewing.

Help!