Exporting SWF files using Dreamweaver 8

Although Dreamweaver 8 makes embedding streaming Flash video in your page easy, we recommend against using it for this purpose due to poor support for its <object> and <embed> HTML code in recent versions of Internet Explorer. We recommend that you use the SWFObject method instead to add the required HTML code to your page.

However, you might still want to use Dreamweaver 8 to export one of its several player control skins. These SWF files provide the outline or visual frame around the video, buttons (e.g., start and stop) and, if you want them, volume controls and progress bars. Dreamweaver creates a second SWF file at the same time - a generic version of the SWF file required to negotiate the stream with the server. We'll follow the steps to produce these two components, but throw away the HTML page produced in the process.

Steps

1. In a new page, select Insert > Media > Flash Video from Dreamweaver 8's main menu.
2. Select Streaming Video from the Video Type pull-down menu
3. Enter a Server URI in the following format:

   rtmp://flash.bu.edu/[application name]/[instance name]

   Since we will be disposing of the HTML code produced from this field, you can enter false values for the application and instance names.
   
   
4. Enter a name as the Stream name. The HTML code produced from this field will be discarded so you can enter any name here.
5. Choose a player skin from the Skin pull down menu after studying the player controls of each option, such as the play and stop button and volume controls.
6. Enter the size and width you want to use in your page to display the video. These need not be the actual values for your video, but they should be large enough to accomodate the requirements stated for each skin option.
7. Click OK to finish - Dreamweaver will create a player skin SWF file and a file named FLVPlayer_Streaming.swf. It will also add HTML code to your page. (Dreamweaver also creates an .asc file that you do not need - just delete it.)
8. Close your HTML page.
9. Delete your HTML page by selecting it in Dreamweaver's Files window and pressing the delete key.
10. If needed, drag and drop your SWF files from their current directory into the any directories that have Web pages that will have streaming Flash Video embedded in them.