Sick of the Tick

[Worm]

Alright, I'm a little out of my element here. I have a couple Flash SWFs that are streamed from a server. I need to be able to tell how long someone has watched these videos. I've been doing a whole lot of math within SwishMax to get as close as I can, but it's a daunting task as there are a lot of variables when it comes to the HTTP protocol.

Anyhow, SwishVideo 2 was realeased recently, and it allows you to set events along the timeline of your movie. What I've done now, is used SwishVideo to create my SWF with an event that fires every 10 seconds. Inside SwishMax, I can detect the event, and fire an function accordingly.

What I currently have in place is a framed html page with a 1 pixel header and then the main frame that has my embedded SWF. When the event fires, I navigate my "hidden" header frame to an ASP page that rights the UserID, Movie, and the current events time to a database. So far, I'm very pleased with the results. I can tell (within10 seconds) how long someone has watched the video.

Here's the downer. Everytime the header frame navigates, IE makes that wonderful "TICK" sound. Anyone have any ideas on how to get around this? This is not a local thing, so registry manipulation is out. Maybe doing the navigation inside a DIV instead? Do all current browsers support DIV? This is where I'm out of my element, so anyone with any ideas... please post.

[Corey]

As far as I know you can't, I might be wrong.

[rhosk]

Well, as you assumed, you can't get around the "tick" sound. This is a (local) system setting.

Now when Flash fires a url, there's no sound. I'm not familiar with [Swish]. If it supports MovieClips(MC), you could have an embedded MC to do this navigation for you - and this would, in turn, lose the header frame. Not quite sure what/how you want, to accomplish this without seeing exactly what you're doing <sneering grin>.

[yosik]

Loading in DIV will get rid of the sound. Most modern browsers support \=DIV.
You could also load the necessary page using a Java script (this will occur hidden from view), assuming the the Jave Engine is installed.

Yossi

[Worm]

Thanks for the replies.

I'd read that loading in a DIV would help my situation. Maybe I'll give it a whirl and see where it takes me.

[Worm]

Hmmmm... This performs the needed function without a tick...
Anyone see any issues. It seems odd that you can execute an ASP script by setting it as the image source, but it works...

<img src="" height=0 width=0 border=0 name="myimage">

function LogIt(event)
{
   document.myimage.src = "http://www.thedomaon.com/rcigrvidmail/LogIt.asp?ID=user@anotherdomain.com&time=" + event;
}

[Corey]

FWIW Javascript is separate from the Java engine, you don't need to have any Java installed to run javascripts.

[Intrigued]

I thought it may be client side.. check: (Win XP)

1. Control Panel
2. Sounds and Audio Devices
3. Sounds (tab)
4. Find subheading Windows Explorer
5. Last one Start Navigation (delete the file path and click Apply then ok).

Did that work?

[Worm]

That'd probably work I-man, but this will need to be applied from an web server delivered page. I don't think I'm going to get that kind of access to a client machine

I think the img src solution is going to be my ticket, but I need to do some more testing.

Thanks everyone, it's so cool have this many brains working for a common cause, especially when it's mine

[Corey]

FWIW As far as I know when the "pros" do this, such as online advertisers and ad researchers, it's all based on logs. You have a separate page/file for each Flash movie and then they simply write a back end script which abstracts your web logs to see how long each user spent on each movie/page, how many visits or "restarts" to each movie, etc. It's easy to bind a user name to an IP when the page loads so that your back end script shows you either or both, you can sort the data in various meaningful ways, chart it over time, etc. FWIW I don't think it's particularly difficult to script up a back end like that in PHP/ASP, or even in AMS for that matter since the log analysis can be offline, local, whatever...

It's also nice because even if the Flash has been cached on their end, as long as they are on your Flash page, the logs show the connect/disconnect times. So that's a zero server load method. Or at least that's my understanding of it, but then again I'm hardly a toothpick chewing big city loggist with a gleaming belt buckle and leopard skin cadillac, so who knows...

It's a much superior solution in terms of server load, and I think that's why a lot of people go that route in terms of compiling usage statistics, i.e. it's a legacy from the days when you really had to keep your scripts clean to avoid loading the server. If you have 20 people viewing a flash movie which writes to a database every 10 seconds, you get 120 hits per minute, no big deal. But if you have 2,000 people viewing that Flash (not really that many actually) you would be generating 12,000 hits per minute which is a whole different show, especially for shared hosting accounts. The problem with putting up a script like that, unless you know 100% for sure you won't have more than "x" amount of users online at any given time, is that it's a potential hotspot. And you know what that means, right? HOTSPOT ARRIBA!!! EVERYBODY MAMBO!!! Do-dee-dee da doo-da dee-dee da!

[Worm]

Nice insight Corey. In this case though, were talking a relatively low hit count so it shouldn't be a big deal either way.

[Corey]

OK. I don't mean to nitpick but did you remember to mambo?

[Worm]

A little bit a .... in my life, it's the mambo number 5.

Originally Posted by Corey

OK. I don't mean to nitpick but did you remember to mambo?

[Intrigued]

Okay, how about muting the volume on the system?

:-D

[Worm]

Again, it's kinda a hard thing to do from a web browser. If it was inside AMS, no biggie.