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Setup Issues and Embedding

thumbnails won't show in playlist

7 replies [Last post]
Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 09:46 Scott Crevier
Anonymous's picture

I'm using JW FLV Media Player 4.1. I have a player with the video on the left, play list on the right, playing 3 FLV files. My thumbnails are not showing up. I've already read through the following post, but that problem is not the same as mine:

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?thread=12508

Here's my player code:

<script type='text/javascript'>
        var s1 = new SWFObject('/js/mediaplayer-4.1/player.swf','ply','576','220','9','#ffffff');
        s1.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
        s1.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
        s1.addParam('wmode','opaque');
        s1.addParam('flashvars','file=chapters.xml&playlist=right&playlistsize=280&streamscript=lighttpd&fullscreen=true&repeat=list');
        s1.write('preview');
</script>

Everything else loads correctly. I can play each of my 3 videos. They each appear in the play list with the titles and descriptions. So all my paths are correct. Functionally, everything works, but a black box displays in place of each thumbnail.

I'm watching my Apache access_log file in one window while loading the web page in another. I can see the request for each of my three thumbnails, and each is returned with a 200 (success) code. So, I know the player is requested and receiving the thumbnails. They're just not displaying. My chapters.xml file has lines like this to configure each thumbnail:

<media:thumbnail url="http://www.domainname.com/webpage/video/photo1.jpg" />

I can copy and paste the URL into my browser and the image is there. So, what am I missing? I had this working on a different site using an older version of the player. Maybe there's something new with 4.1? Also, I haven't been able to find any info about the proper specs for the thumbnail images, so maybe it only works with specific dimensions?

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 12:21 kLink  
Anonymous's picture

Flash can be quite persnickety about the images that it will display, especially when it is re-sizing them for the thumbnails.

For sure, Flash won't load progressive jpgs.

I've seen a set of images, all encoded the same, where one image simply won't load in the thumbnails until it was re-encoded. And, that image worked flawlessly in the v3.x player/rotator.

Try displaying one of the images in the display area in place of a video.

Try re-encoding the images, maybe with a different graphics editor.

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 14:36 Scott Crevier  
Anonymous's picture

Thanks for the suggestions kLink. I'll try them.

You raise another question I have that I wasn't going to work on until I got this fixed. When my web page loads, I don't play the first video automatically. It looks like the player starts out by displaying the first frame of the first video on the play list. I would like to specify an image to display there instead, which of course would go away if/when the visitor clicks "play". Do you know how to do that?

Doing this might also help me test your suggestions.

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 15:11 kLink  
Anonymous's picture

Normally, when autostart=false, the player displays the preview image for the selected track (first track is shuffle =false).

If that is not happening on your page, something is broken (probably your images :D).

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 15:52 Scott Crevier  
Anonymous's picture

kLink, a couple of things. First, you were right on with your comments about the jpg encoding. I'll tell you exactly what I was doing for the benefit of other idiots like me. I have a folder (on Windows XP) that contains my 3 FLV files. I want the FLV files and corresponding JPG thumbnail files to have the same names (except of course for the extension). So, I created the thumbnail in my image program, and when I saved it, I did a "save as". I navigated to the folder with the FLV files, selected the FLV file name so that I can make sure the file names match, and then I changed the extension from "flv" to "jpg". It did indeed save the file with the proper name, but it wasn't using the standard JPG encoding that I normally use. To fix it, I just re-saved the images on top of the old ones, making sure I have the JPG type selected. It all works now!

Though it seems that the thumbnails are using a size that's scaled down from 320x240, and my videos are 300x200. So I just made the appropriate adjustments with the thumbnails so that they are not mis-proportioned.

About the preview image, how would I know what the preview image is? Is that a particular frame in the FLV file? I'm not the one making the actual FLV files, but I do have access to the guy and can probably affect that if I need to.

Thanks for your time.

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 16:07 kLink  
Anonymous's picture

The preview images are whatever you have in the image element of the playlist. The same image that is used for the thumbnail. Normally, you would want that image to be the same size as your video and the displayarea. The player will scale it for the thumbnail. Since the thumbnails are fixed at 60x40 1.5:1 and video is usually 1.3...:1 or 1.7...:1, that makes for some strange distortion of the thumbnails. It would be nice to have either a separate thumbnail image or control of the thumbnail proportions.

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 16:38 Scott Crevier  
Anonymous's picture

Sounds good. Thanks. Yeah, I did just figure out the strangeness of the thumbnail sizes. My thumbs are 300x200 to match the videos exactly. They look great as a preview image, but they are distorted as thumbnails.

Thanks again for your time.

Posted: Thu, 2008-08-28 16:42 kLink  
Anonymous's picture

@Scott,

You're welcome. Good Luck! :)

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