Exporting SWF files using Flash Professional 8

Flash Professional 8 has a wizard that can create one SWF file for stream negotiation and another for player controls - both necessary components. It offers different choices for player control skins than Dreamweaver 8. Also, the SWF playback file created through Flash Professional 8's menus is not generic like Dreamweaver's - it is specific to the video you intend to stream. While this makes the next step of embedding the video a little easier, it also means you'll need to make a new SWF file for your next streaming Flash video, unless you write some custom ActionScript code.

Flash Professional 8 can do much more than we will discuss in this tutorial, however. Advanced users of Flash Professional 8 can create their own custom SWF files that perform the tasks of both the SWF for stream negotiation and the SWF for player controls (skin) in a single SWF file.

Because this program also supports programming in ActionScript as well as all the other tools in the Flash authoring platform, it also offers Flash developers the possibility to create SWF files with custom playback behaviors. You can even create rich media applications for which streaming Flash is just one component. You can also customize your player control skin - or even build one from scratch.

For now, let's focus on the basic task of exporting our SWF file:

Steps

1. Open a new Flash document by selecting File > New > Flash Document after launching Flash Professional 8
2. Select File > Import > Import Video from the main menu.
3. Select "Already deployed to a web server, Flash Video Streaming Service, or Flash Communications Server" when prompted "Where is your video file?"
4. Enter the URL to your Flash video in the following format:

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

Where "appication name" is the name of your registered directory, "instance name" is the name of the subdirectory of the registered directory that contains your FLV file, and stream name is the name of your FLV file. For example:

rtmp://flash.bu.edu/nis/demo/nis-flash.flv

For more information, see "Registering your directory with the Flash server."
5. Click Next.
6. Choose a player skin from the pull down list and click Next. (If you have a custom skin already created and uploaded to a server, you can select "Custom" and then provide the URL)
7. Click Finish
8. Accept the default "Flash 8 Document" in the Save As Type pull-down menu and choose a place to save your Flash document (an FLA file), unless you want a Flash 7 compatible movie.
9. Flash developers who wish to program in ActionScript to customize the stream negotiation can do so at this point.
10. If you want to test your work so far, select Control > Test Movie (assuming your FLV file is in place in a registered directory)
11. Choose File > Export > Export Movie from the main menu
12. Choose a file name and location to save your SWF file.
13. Accept the defaults on the final dialog window unless you are making a Flash 7 movie.
14. Click OK.

Assuming your FLV file is already uploaded to your registered directory on www.bu.edu, all that is left for you to do is to embed your video in your Web page and and to upload your Web page and SWF files to your BU Web server. We recommend using the SWFObject method to embed your video in your page.

(Note: if your Web server is not www.bu.edu, people.bu.edu, webct.bu.edu, or courseinfo.bu.edu, you should make sure your server is registered with the Flash Media Server as well.)