RAWR-Player-1.0.0 Coming....

[TSG]

Alongside working on the new website, I have been busy working on the final build of RAWR-Player-1 which has been designated now as the final version using AS2, unless there is minor bugs to repair. We are looking forward to learning how to use AS3 properly, there may even be an in-built playlist put into the AS3 version of the player.

Some of the new features you can hope to enjoy in this version of RAWR-Player:

• Templates running 640x360 Widescreen like YouTube (640x390 with interface).
• Aspect ratios are now kept. Whether the player is in 4:3 or 16:9.*
• Fullscreen capability through icon, context menu and double click, also holds aspect ratio, with interface in bottom center.
• Buffer information.
• Spacebar control for pause and play whilst in fullscreen mode.
• Support for all known flash player media extensions and codecs.
• Possible improved performance using the new wmode="direct" feature of flash player. (Hardware acceleration, good for video apparently)
• Still very small and compact, currently under 8KB.
• Possible use of a php script known as xmoov.php to enable http live streaming, ability to go anywhere you like on the timeline when hosted on a php enabled server.

* Stolen YouTube videos do not carry the respective Metadata for Height and Width, resulting in a stretched rendering of the video. This of course depends on your preferred Aspect Ratio, but will stretch in fullscreen if not repaired. To 'inject' the correct Metadata, use this program http://www.buraks.com/flvmdi/, there is a GUI available for it also, you simply put the main program next to the GUI exe and away it goes. There is Linux and Mac equivalents but this is the simplest one I have found for Windows, it works well.

We are considering making a Silverlight version of RAWR-Player, to playback WMV and MPG files. This will depend on time and demand, Silverlight is a Microsoft product like Adobe Flash and is available for most platforms at this point in time (we all know how M$ can be EEE). It has been packaged as usual with the latest Live product installers and I have started to notice it used in random places. Of course it is not doing as well as Flash, and probably never will be able to compete, personally I don't care for it.  As we would have to learn a whole new programming language and system. It might be difficult to get the dynamic functionality of Flash RAWR-Player into Silverlight, we just do not know anything about it yet. I guess we'll start off with the basics and work from there. This of course wont happen for a while, its just on the to-do list.

Didn't realise I had so much to say, sorry for the book.

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Here is a preview of a 1280x720 H.264 MP4 file being played in the browser.

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Here is a preview of a 1280x720 H.264 MP4 file being played in fullscreen.

[Ranger]

That looks nice 

[thexfile]

Can it handle MP3s @ 48000Hz ?

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Nope, flash cant handle mp3 48000hz audio. Not a limitation of RAWR-Player, but flash. From my research on this issue from last time it was brought up. I found that flash only works with 11, 22, 33, 44 kHz mp3.

If your MP3 files playback is too fast or too slow, they likely contain variable bit rate encoding or unsupported sample frequencies (eg 48Khz). Please stick to constant bit rate encoding and 11,22,33,44 kHz.

Personally I have found variable bit rate mp3's to work fine, its mainly the frequency that flash has an issue with. Anything over 44kHz is overkill really, the human ear can only determine around 20kHz on average, maybe its been doubled for stereo audio to 44kHz? So why people think they need above 44kHz for audio is a bit crazy, especially in mp3 lol, if it was FLAC, WAV, or a multi-channel audio file, it can possibly be justified but if someone is offering mp3 music at 48kHz that has been ripped from CD initially. From my experience they are being a bit silly.

[parade]

Nope, flash cant handle mp3 48000hz audio. Not a limitation of RAWR-Player, but flash. From my research on this issue from last time it was brought up. I found that flash only works with 11, 22, 33, 44 kHz mp3.

http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2009/01/30/flash-player-10-48khz-sound-playback-bug/

Anything over 44kHz is overkill really, the human ear can only determine around 20kHz on average, maybe its been doubled for stereo audio to 44kHz?

It is a question of oversampling to avoid distortions by filtering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling

So why people think they need above 44kHz for audio is a bit crazy, especially in mp3 lol, if it was FLAC, WAV, or a multi-channel audio file, it can possibly be justified but if someone is offering mp3 music at 48kHz that has been ripped from CD initially. From my experience they are being a bit silly.

People having music with 48 Khz is mailnly not a question of quality but a question of handling. Nobody normally will rip from a CD and resample to 48 Khz.
48 KHz (or 96 or 192 KHz) is standard in music production. Even a lot of digital radio stations broadcast with 48 Khz.
I still have a DAT-Recorder, that uses 48 Khz for recording. A lot of sound cards use 48 Khz in recording and internally have to resample to 44,1 Khz if wanted.
So a lot of people have music with 48 Khz and don't want to resample all of it. Anyway resampling always means a little bit of quality loss.
MP3s with a bitrate of 192 and above (and a sampling rate of 44,1 or 48 KHz) are really good enough for jus hearing (not for rework) and are equal in (hearing)-quality to FLAC, WAV. Even resampling such FLAC and WAVes from 44,1 KHz to 48 KHz does not make any sence. If possible resampling should always be avoided.

[TSG]

Ok, I have researched this some more, the 2 fixes for this issue on that site wont work because the first method would mean no file streaming, what is the point of that? The second fix isn't possible as that is an AS3 script, which will come in handy when we make the AS3 version of the player hehe.

Further research on this revealed that the bug occurred in Flash Player 10, which is why the issue kinda came out of nowhere.
These guys talk about it and reveal an official bug report http://www.flashden.net/forums/thread/flash-player-10-audio-bug/7727?page=1

Also I know that recorded audio is usually oversampled 48kHz, I was just trying to make the point that this only effects a minority. I had high hopes that you had found me a fix for this though oh well.

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Just an update on this, I managed to get the interface to fill the bottom of the screen in fullscreen mode.

Those interested in editing the source, I don't know if anyone does... this version has changed quite a lot, adding so many features has created quite a monster of a code, there is small fixes here and there... while it works wonderfully when compiled...  its not exactly continuous in style or 'elegant'. I'm mainly referring to the 'Main' and 'Interface' code pages, but considering this player initially only played mp3 files, I am amazed at the result I have achieved by simply re-working the code to suit the NetStream component.

AS3 seems to have much better video and audio handling so it will achieve a better result. The next version (RAWR-Player-2) will be planned out in a way to handle this many file types and options, without compromising the ability to modify the player. It will also introduce live streaming via php (for php based servers) and rmtp live streaming, but that is only if Richard cant get it to work with this build we want the live streaming for video tutorials on our homepage. Progressive streaming will still be the standard on http, non-php based servers though. Also a possible xml playlist option for people to use if they see fit. We aim to make the lightest player available with all the features you would expect from a 'flash media player'.

I have noticed that the font on the interface uses Arial, and so it will only work if that font is installed, not a problem for Windows, but for Linux and Mac users they must have this font either installed or a close equivalent for the player to have the same font appeal as seen on Windows. Mac generally has fatter font faces and Linux rather wide characters... I can fix this by using a pixel font and embedding it in the player itself, however this will increase the size of the player dramatically, and I could not get the embedded font to actually work... no idea why... so for now I will leave it as Arial, though sad it is still this way, Windows is still used by the larger majority.

Attached is a screenshot from my laptop.

[xenolink]

WOWWWWW I am in Awe.

I been waiting for this for a longgg timee.

This mean Divx/Xvid will be supported since x264 is?

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h264, not x264 sorry but flash doesn't have the divx/xvid licenses and I don't know if they ever will. If anyone knows the story of divx, they'll know that the codec has been down a long and rocky road to come even close to being a standard. Sure if flash player one day supports it I don't doubt the player could play the videos.

h264 with avc audio (MPEG-4) is a video standard now, most HD game trailers, videos for your PS3, XBOX 360 or Wii are in .MP4 H.264 AVC, Flash has adopted this codec and are now planning to move away from .FLV due to its restrictions (created by their own stupidity) and this codec will become the common video standard for flash embedded videos.

[Xenolinked]

It's fine i don't mind converting to FLV

still can't wait for the release.

[TSG]

You would be better off converting to .mp4 using h264 and avc audio, you'll get better quality than you would with FLV and its a better format.

[Fysack]

Fuck my man That Stevens Guy you are so fucking hardcore go go go! :-)