How to write and read data to and from .flv

[e-WideWeb]

Can anyone explain the concept of how to write and read data (plain text
messages, or entire objects) from and to a .flv file? The application Flogger
(the bandwidth metering app) writes statistics data into a .flv file and a
client .swf reads that data back. I must admit I don't understand how this is
done.
Do you start a stream and then .send text or an object through the netstream
and that automatically becomes part of the .flv file? What happens with text
data or an entire object when a .flv file gets read into an .swf client? And
how do you access that data in the client?

[e-WideWeb]

Anybody an idea, how text data is stored in a .flv file?

[JayCharles]

There may be other ways of using this feature, but here's how I use it:

1. Create a function in the .swf that will play the video such as:

function showText(msg){
someTextField.text = msg;
}

Then, while recording the video, a call would be made over the netStream (I
like to do this on the server side, but I imagine you could call it from the
client side as well):

my_stream.send("showText", "Here is some text");

That send call gets recorded in the flv (assuming you're recording, otherwise
it just gets sent to the subscribers).

On playback, the function is called at the same point in the stream when it
was called during recording.

HTH

[e-WideWeb]

ahh, thanks for that. This clarifies it a bit. It would be neat however, if you could just "save" objects that way and later retrieve them by playing the .flv. I guess that can't be done though.

[JayCharles]

Well.. I haven't tested this... but there might be a way to get a little closer
to what you want to do.

From what I've read, if a stream is being recorded, but no video is being
published to the stream, all of the send events will fire off at once right at
the beginning of the recorded .flv. If that works, you could theoretically have
all of your data (no reason it can't be arrays or other objects) piled into the
flv with no video. That way, when the flv loads, all of the function calls
would happen right away.

Of course, this doesn't get around having to use a function to access the data.

[e-WideWeb]

sure.

makes perfect sense.