tracking video files - embedding flv to swf

1
votes

we have a mRSS feed that contains video information. e.g <video fileTitle"testing" fileurl="http://www.example.com/test.flv> when we send this out users are using their own player and the video file url is included in the feed, so there is no way to add analytics to this. unless we load the flv via a swf file. for example: <video fileTitle"testing" fileurl="http://www.example.com/loader.swf?fileurl=test.flv>

so my question is if a player is expecting a flv file is it ok to give them a swf file with a flv preloaded in it? Does it matter that it is a swf file? if it doesn't matter then I can add analytics code to the swf file and then server the flv to the users who are connecting to the file.

Thanks in advance.

2
xmlflashvideorssvideo-streaming
If I understand your question, I would put the analytics in no other place than the swf. – AsTheWormTurns
I understand that piece, but the real question if I gave you a swf file when you were expecting a flv or a mov or a mp4 file would you be able to load the video if i embedded the actual movie within a swf? – chips
If, as you say, the player (I imagine a swf file) is "expecting" a flv, you probably can't load any other file with that API. How do you load the flv? Can you show some code? – AsTheWormTurns
so the idea is that an mRSS feed would contain a path to the video file, instead of giving the path to the video file it will have the path to the swf file which in turn will embed the flv file: fileurl="example.com/loader.swf?fileurl=test.flv so in the end a flash player(swf) will embed a swf file (my wrapper) which in turn will embed a flv file. wondering if this is possible, can a player expecting a flv file take in a swf file which will load in a flv file? – chips
"Can a player expecting a flv file take in a swf file which will load in a flv file?". Is what I'm trying to reply to: it dipends on your code, but I fear you can't. Anyway, you can have a file swf loading another swf that loads a flv. – AsTheWormTurns

2 Answers

1
votes

I would say that the answer is no.

Assuming that when you say "users are using their own player", that can be different Flash based video players, like for example some may be using JW Player, some may use Flowplayer and others may use their own custom made players, then providing a swf file in the fileurl won't work.

1
votes

You could use server-side code to send analytics events when the RSS feed is requested, and/or when FLV files are loaded from the web server (forward your FLVs through a PHP proxy script, for example).

The analytics code won't be the same as code gathered from clients, and the server will have to do extra work, but you should at least be able to collect some data, though perhaps not everything you are interested in.