Embedding a Flash player in Google Earth kmz

Question

I previously made a Google Earth kml that has embedded flash video content. To properly play the content in a tag, I hosted a flash player (currently using flowplayer) on my webserver and used the following HTML within the description tag. This worked flawlessly:

            <description><![CDATA[ 
            <object id="flowplayer"
                    data="http://foo.com/flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.15.swf" width="320" height="180"
                    type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
                <param name="movie" value="http://foo.com/flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.15.swf" />
                <param name="flashvars" value='config={"clip":"http://foo.com/movies/flv/video.flv"}'/>
          </object>]]></description>

However the requirement came up for users not connected to the internet to be able to view the content. I know how to properly embed images and other files within a kmz and have them work, however the flashplayer is not working using the following description tag:

            <description><![CDATA[ 
            <object id="flowplayer"
                    data="flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.15.swf" width="320" height="180"
                    type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
                <param name="movie" value="flowplayer/flowplayer-3.2.15.swf" />
                <param name="flashvars" value='config={"clip":"movies/flv/video.flv"}'/>
          </object>]]></description>

The folder structure in the kmz is as follows:

archive.kmz
|- doc.kml
|- flowplayer
   |- flowplayer-3.2.15.swf
|- movies
   |- flv
      |- video.flv

It seems as if the flash player is not even loaded (the content renders as if it is attempting to load a flash video but am not seeing any flowplayer images or errors). Has anyone tried something like this or have any ideas why this isn't working via relative pathing?

Google is fuzzy on what it allows to access in KMZ other than KML and imagery but don't think the Google Earth client allows such a thing. — JasonM1

dg68 dg68 · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-12T11:34:16

I tried the same thing with a local flv movie and I had the same problem. It seems that this is because of security problems. I tried to play it in a html page but Internet Explorer blocked it because of ActiveX security. A solution that works is to use a small web server (like tinyweb) and replace the links to swf and flv in the kml with http:// localhost/swf/...swf and http:// localhost/mymovies/...flv. The tinyweb server must be launch before opening the kml (or kmz). A solution is to make a sfx package to obtain an exe file. When opening the exe file, it is possible to run a script that launch tiny.exe and later the kmz file. It is a little bit complicated but I think it could be a solution.

Embedding a Flash player in Google Earth kmz

1 Answers