Here is my presentation I did at MAX Hong Kong 2005 on Testing for Security Holes in Flash and Flash Media Server 2.0. This is the second in a pair of sessions I did at all three MAX conferences in Asia this year, here is the other presentation (Best Practices & Architecture for Flash & Flash Media Server 2.0).
This one too has streamed video with captions and syncronized slides and once again I have to thank Captionate 2.0 for the excellent functionality to get captions and cue points embedded in an FLV file that just fits in the seminar app. This time I took advantage of the importing of the captions text file and formatting that is in Captionate 2.0.. I can't believe I didn't use this before. I had actually copy and pasted in every line last time.. it took far too long. With this importing stuff, it parses out the file into bite size lines and then all you have to do is press the "add caption" button and it adds in the line that you want to add in the file as it plays along.
Truly simple and efficient.. I can't rave enough.
Anyways, the presentation is a bit drab and dry.. it's security centric so what more can you ask for right? But there are quite a few points in there worth listening to I think if you are an intermediate FMS developer or budding FCS/FMS developer looking for tips and concepts on making your apps a bit more safe for the "real world".
Anyways, here is the link to the presentation files again, just in case.
Again, any comments are very appreciated (I only got one on the last one.. I hope the preso was useful to some..), and any questions should be answered as soon as I can, so freely post any and all :)
Here's something I've just discovered about Premiere Pro 1.5 and something I knew about AE6.5 for a while.
This is definitely one of the areas that I think MM could have improved on with ALL of their products.
Changing the language might not seem useful to some but in the case that you usually use on language, but speak more than one, and happen to be in an environment that requires the one that you don't have set then this is how you change up the languages.
For Premiere Pro 1.5 it's a bit tougher than AE6.5 but it's easy to do and works fine.
First off you need to mess with your registry. When you buy the software, you have most likely chosen a language at purchase. This is common. The cool thing about Adobe is that they add in all the other languages with the software, just in case. So open up your registry with regedit or whatever you generally use, go into the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Premiere Pro\1.5
In there, you will find a key called "Language". Change that to one of the languages that you will see in the directory of Premiere 1.5.
I have the following choices (I can't imagine they will be different for anybody else):
de_DE
en_US
fr_FR
it_IT
ja_JP
I'm sure I don't have to explain what languages those are. Just pick one of those and change the language key.
Close up regedit now, you're done there.
Next you need to copy some plug-ins from your default install. This is in the plug-ins directory. Copy the language that is installed already. For example, I have the Japanese version installed, which means that I have a "Common" directory and a "ja_JP" directory. I copied the ja_JP directory and renamed it "en_US". This will allow Premiere to load up all your plugins you have.
Now just open up Premiere and it should be the new language you have selected.
For AE, all you have to do is go into the languages directory of the install directory for AE and copy out the shortcut they have been so nice to add. Put it on your desktop or whatever and you now have the option of starting AE in another language.
I knew about the AE one a while back, but the premiere one is new to me today. The reason I wanted to change this is because sometimes I work straight with our clients on video work. The Japanese interface is a bit odd to them, and I thought it might be better if I could show it in English. Plus if I do any tutes on Premiere like I'm thinking of doing, it will now be in the right language for the audience I plan to address.
So, hopefully that helps somebody out there :)
*** A quick update***
It seems that Adobe thought it would be a great idea to make the fonts in some parts of the UI dependent on the language in Premiere, so some areas don't support 2 bytes characters. Like the Effect Controls panel, and some areas of the preferences areas.. This is odd.. I wonder why they did this instead of making it work with any language. The effects panel is fine, and parts of the prefs are fine, timeline, and other windows don't have a problem. bleh.. well if you aren't using 2 byte chars, it will probably work great switching between languages.
*** Disclaimer ***
Just to quickly note too, that I assume no responsibility if this messes up your computer in any way whatsoever. So do it at your own risk. Works fine for me though.
I've finally managed to get the video I took of my session on Best Practices & Architecture for Flash & Flash Media Server 2.0 that I did at MAX Korea 2005. I did have two other versions, one from Singapore and one from Hong Kong, but the Korea one seemed best because we had over an hour for our sessions, whereas the others were one hour or less. So there is more content in this one.
The video is Flash 8 streamed from FMS2 with the captions put in for the whole video with Captionate 2.0. I've got to say that this app rules! It's a serious pain to get all the captions (took me 4 hours for 1 hour of video to type them all out), but once you have them, Captionate just makes it easy to embed in the FLV file and in turn integrate into the our Flash application.
Anyways, I have one more video I want to get up, Testing for Security Holes in Flash and Flash Media Server which I have captured but just need to edit. The one I am using is from the Hong Kong MAX conference. It shouldn't take me too much longer, but I am doing it only in my spare time.. which I'm lacking more and more of lately. Either way, I expect to have it up next week at the latest.
Here is the link again to the presentation files just in case.
And the session details:
Best Practices for Development and Architecture for Flash Media Server
I thought I'd finally pop on over to the Motion Design Center on Adobe's site and check out the tutes they have but none of them will open for me. It doesn't matter what browser I use, the "Launch Video Tutorial" button does absolutely nothing. And it's not like I'm using linux or some odd OS, it's just plain old WinXP Pro. In fact, the window itself doesn't even show properly for me, with the video preview window and the button half hidden behind the scrollbar on the right. bleh..
I certainly hope that the folks at MM step up into their place of command and teach Adobe a thing or two on how to make a site work with all browsers and systems and make them understand that "Experience Matters". It looks great, I give them that, but functionality rates somewhere around 3 out of 10 for me (at least I could navigate to the page).
This is useful for not only miniature sets, but for anybody that wants to do green/blue screen keying. Which is becoming insanely popular with Flash.
I've been finding a lot of the "making" sections of movies that are on DVDs and sites like the link below offer a lot of tips that can be taken advantage of in video for the web now that Flash has much better support for video, and in particular, the alpha channel.
From the Kingiskong.net site. Click on Post Production Diary - 9 Weeks to Go!
On a side note, I've been following the making of King Kong by Peter Jackson for quite a while now. I can't wait until it comes out. On the one hand, I like that I can see how they make everything, and they show most of their secrets, but on the other hand, when I go to the movie I expect that I'll enjoy it just a little bit less now that I know how everything works. Look for imperfections and stuff too probably.
This is interesting I thought. This developer has made a quick prototype of using your camera by pointing it at the screen and moving crosshairs around based on where the camera is looking.
In other words, you could stick your camera on the end of your mouse, point it at the screen, it will track where the camera is looking, then use the mouse button to shoot or something.
Pretty cool stuff. Make sure to get your camera close enough that it can see the red dots, but not too close that it can't see the rest of the black part.
Here is the link (japanese site): http://psyark.jp/?entry=20051208003209
via MediaCreator.jp