***Update, see bottom of post***
Use this at your own risk but I know I am and will for both computers I have here.
Here's the deal. If you happen to have a Japanese OS, Adobe seems that it would like it's software to recognize that even though you have the english version of the software installed (japanese version hasn't even shipped yet) it wants to default the input to Japanese IME. Very inconvenient because nobody really codes in Japanese. Maybe some comments of course but not the coding.
This kinda SUCKS.. to put it bluntly, and I have no idea who made this decision. But I'm going to go ask next week when I'm down in Adobe HQ and have a quick chat with that person :)
Anyways, there is a way to fix it. You have to mess with your registry settings (I couldn't find anything within the applications menus or prefs).
This is only for windows by the way, no idea if Mac computers have the same problem.
Open up the registry by running regedit. Head into:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Flash9\Settings
In there is a:
UseJaZhIME value and it is set to 1. Change that to 0 and restart Flash. All should be good now :)
Now.. how do I fix Fireworks, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and all the rest??
***Update..
It only seems to work the first few times or something. Not sure what is happening but I'm still looking into it.
***Update 2..
Looks like that the registry setting does nothing. Let me try to explain why I was confused.
There are two ways to open Flash. One is by clicking the flash program in the programs list and the other is by double clicking on an fla file. I was doing one or the other but not just one of those.
That makes a difference because I'm using the trial version of the software and the trial screen doesn't come up for a few seconds. In those few seconds I can type normally in the actions panel which made me think it was now fixed, then when the trial screen comes up and I press "next" it then spits me back into flash where I'm now being forced to type in the Japanese IME. So, it seems the culprit is the trial screen. One of things that confused me was when I would open flash and start a new document, the trial screen comes up before I get to the actions panel (but not so when I open a document directly). Now I'm not sure what the above setting does because it makes no difference within flash.
So there you go.. trial screen is the bad guy. Now I understand why this wouldn't make it to the bug base during beta testing. Nobody is using the trial version during beta testing.. everybody gets a serial number.
This one is a very good question and actually comes up quite often. I've seen it on forums and mailing lists. It gets answered but I guess people don't want to search. So it makes a good quick tutorial here on this site with all the rest of them :)
The question: Is it possible to insert or overwrite into the middle of an audio stream?
The answer:
Yes. You have to do this server side though.
The theory:
What you need to do is make a copy of the FLV up to the spot you want to insert your new piece in. Then you play the new piece and append it to the original. Then you take the remainder of the FLV and append it to the new FLV you are creating. This is really hokey and actually requires you take the complete time that both FLV files have. If you have a 5 minute FLV and you want to add in a short 20 second clip to the middle of it, this process will take 5 mins and 20 seconds.
So you take stream A, the original stream you want to add something into (all of this is server side)
oldStream = Stream.get("A");
Grab the piece you want to add in
smallClip = Stream.get("B");
Make a new stream to record into
newStream = Stream.get("newFile");
Make the new stream record the old file
newStream.play("oldFile");
newStream.record("record");
Then you need to monitor it with an interval of something short like every 100 milliseconds. When it reaches the time of whatever you want the new clip to go into then stop playing the old stream and put in the new one:
newStream.play(false);
newStream.play("smallClip");
** side note **
You can also at this point tell the server to stop recording too, and then use the append value in the record method to add onto the current FLV.
newStream.record(false)
newStream.play("smallClip");
newStream.record("append");
** end side note **
Watch the onStatus and see when it ends, you should get a "NetStream.Play.Stop" event, when you get that, then just play the other clip again, starting from the point where you finished off:
newStream.play("oldFile", 25); //25 is the seconds time you want the clip to start from.
When it finishes playing again then just stop recording and you should have a stream that has another stream in it. Delete the old one if you want I suppose.
So you can see it's a crappy tedious process, but yes, it can be done :)
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.