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Vimeo's Flash player controller rocks - why is everyone else's so horrible?
I found this really intriguing video via kottke's remaindered links of a photographer who took a pic of himself every day for six years, and then threw all the images together into a movie. But this post isn't about the cool video - it's about Vimeo's Flash player controller.
After pressing play, mouseover the video again and note the timeline controller that pops up. Now click anywhere in that controller to jump around the timeline (of video your player has downloaded, of course). For bonus points, click and drag to scrub back and forth a few seconds - awesome, isn't it? You're watching a Flash video that, as long as it's buffered enough, more or less has near-perfect performance in terms of navigating the timeline, selecting specific points and scrubbing footage. In Flash! Why does nearly everyone else's Flash player/controller suck? YouTube, MySpace - I'm looking at you. Embedded QuickTime and Windows Movie files have been able to do this forever.. why can't Flash master this fundamental function?
You can tell Vimeo's controller is custom - it's too 'web 2.0' and gloriously simple and intuitive; there's no way Macromedia-cum-Adobe built it. So what gives? Do you DLS readers have any idea as to why Flash, with Adobe's big video services push, doesn't seem to offer these basic necessities of producing a quality online video experience? Sound off, even if it's just an explanation to help sooth the pain.
Comments
10
Subscribe to commentsChrisSep 4th 2006 3:52PM
Vimeo is, hands down, the best video sharing service for independent filmmaker. No argument.
artist-illustratorSep 4th 2006 10:24AM
Vimeo's Flash player controller takes up to much video space, it's in the way!!
the best Flash player controller that ive come across can be found right here
----------> http://www.fabchannel.com/
great site (free concerts!!!) looks good ands works even better
go give it a go
David G. HongSep 4th 2006 11:46AM
The guy hasn't smiled yet.
MeekishSep 4th 2006 12:49PM
A scrubber in Flash can only jump to the nearest keyframe when being dragged by a user. More keyframes = larger video file, so it is understandable that YouTube and Google video would encode their FLV files with a low number of keyframes.
Bryan BartowSep 4th 2006 12:50PM
"Perfect" scrubbing is harder than it sounds. I work for an interactive media agency and we've created a player that's pretty darn good, but not perfect. It's certainly not something you can just throw together in an hour. I suspect Google and YouTube just didn't want to spend the necessary time and resources to get an ultimate player developed. What they have works well enough and people go there in droves. By the way, while the functionality of the above controls are nice, it looks like @$$. It's far too large and is terribly designed.
Bryan BartowSep 4th 2006 12:54PM
Meekish also brings up a good point. Files could potentially be huge if enough keyframes were encoded to give more "accurate" scrubbing. A lot of it has to be bandwidth concerns for both parties.
ElectroGeekSep 4th 2006 11:45PM
I think there was a woman on YouTube that had this idea first. Oh yeah the player. Smooth.... Congrats Vimeo!
DiddleSep 5th 2006 1:04AM
Yeah, the woman one is much better - I think she used some kind of software to "stabilize" and make it so her head was the same size and in the center of every frame.
If this guy's a photographer, he hasn't learned about lighting yet. :p
Pranav ShahSep 5th 2006 4:28AM
www.lifelogger.com have a decent flash player. No logos like Google Video, YouTube or odeo.
http://positivepeace.blogspot.com Check out the neat player over here
ElodrenSep 8th 2006 9:56AM
Oh my god, he`s transforming into Al Pacino!