Kenny Bunch

Adult Swim Fix is the proper name for the Adult Swim video application and it is not new. However, as of last week it does have a new video format. It has been switched to the most popular format on the web, Flash.Anyone who is familiar with the application can see that it looks exactly the same. Well, point blank, that is because it is. You see when I wrote it (as well as the Cartoon Video and Toonami players which are still WM), I wrote the player to be format agnostic. When they play video, they have no clue of what the video is, just that it is video. The players are set up where their playback can be changed in a one line reference switch to: Windows Media Streaming, Windows Media Progressive, Quicktime Progressive, Flash Streaming, or Flash Progressive. The rest of the application logic remains the same including the ad serving, tracking, service request, etc.Why did I do this? I did it so that the application could be adapted for variant uses, and more importantly, I did it to make choice a very simple option. I first had to convince the machine that video on the web is a good idea and work within their comfort zone. In the same breathe, I wanted to make it easy enough for them to move from their comfort zone to an area where they can form advances. It was all strategic and done in the best interests of the companies using the player.All said, the Fix Flash conversion was step A. Right now I consider it a “ghetto player” comparable to the likes of those like Brightcove. Not that it, or they are not good, but the focus in the wrong place and not on the users. I intend to do better, a lot better, I just needed to open the doors first ;).If anyone is interested, I’ll be briefly touching on Adult Swim Fix, SuperDeluxe, and other video projects in my presentation at FITC in April.

In the Mac version of Flash Player 9.0.28, the NetStream event NetStream.Play.Stop does not fire on clips that are longer in length. I did not narrow it down to what length it deteriorated at, but generally the test clips were around 3 to 4 minutes in length. The bug tests were consistent, and could not be replicated in previous versions of the Mac player or any PC player. Just to verify it wasn’t the encoder, the first tests were done encoding with AnyStream, and later attempts were made with encoders such as the Adobe Standalone, which failed as well.

Is this a serious bug, it depends on how you define serious. Most developers use this event to determine completion of a video, even the Adobe FLVPlayback component uses it and fails. In players that display post video messaging, run post rolls, or cycle playlists and rely on this method, these action items simply won’t display or run.

You can attempt workarounds with NetStream.Buffer.Empty and the duration from MetaData. In this specific case, you attempt to catch the Empty event firing at the end of a clip and use that as your completion event. Even if it doesn’t fire in certain race conditions, I recommend at least putting something like this in as backup measures.

All in all, it’s not good when there are inconsistencies in the player. My hope is that it gets addressed soon.

As of Wednesday January 17, 2007, Turner Broadcasting’s new comedy broadband site, SuperDeluxe, is alive and well. The project is a YouTube of sorts, but with highlighted content (right now coming from professionals). It’s an interesting approach because it is very niche, focusing on comedy and putting an editorial voice around it. Though it has a community aspect, it is not striving to be a YouTube or MySpace, instead it strives to be what it is, comedy. In a time where increasingly we are overwhelmed with mass amounts of contents, having to sift and search through everything, an organized niche provides a place to find something of particular interest.

I’m personally interested to see how it does, as I had the privilege of working on it. You see, the flashy little video player, the code running it is courtesy of yours truely. I was the video player code monkey and consulted at a high level on the project. Luckily for me, I was actually able to enlist the creative director Todd Dominey (aka the DOM father), to get his hands dirty and design the player. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with how it came out. The design, ui feedback, ad model, and tracking all seemed to work out pretty smoothly.Overall, working with the list of players at SD was a great experience, I think their hard work shows in the site. I was privileged and honored to be a part of it.

For now, have a laugh and enjoy some SD comedy

Note: most of these videos are rated “mature,” so they may not be safe for workplace viewing.

Making Friends with Chelsea Peretti

ArchDuke

Flying

The Ted Zone

Today is a great day, it is MLK day. It’s a day marked to honor someone that changed our society for the better. In honor of this day, CNN had me do the programming for a small tribute piece about Martin Luther King. It’s just a simple sliding timeline with imagery, audio, and bullet points. Though it took me only a few hours to code, its a beautiful piece for a beautiful person. Its always feels good to contribute to small educational piece like this.

I had some suspicions earlier, but didn’t feel like spreading a rumor mill before an announcement of the actual device itself. Now they definitely seem grounded to say, given the announcement and spec release. The fact that the IPhone uses OSX, Apollo is also based on WebKit (Safari’s engine), it seems like Adobe’s target to handhelds may be released sooner than later.

Right before Christmas 06 I got to create a quick and “interesting” e-card application for Adult Swim’s show Assy McGee. The app allows you to choose a type of recipient and a greeting, it then blends the choices together with related props, clothes, and message pieces into a single e-card for your loved ones to enjoy. The only external piece other than the Flash was a backend service that sent an email containing the html page the SWF was embeded on with query params that reflected a user’s selections. When your unexpecting recipient visited the url, the SWF was fed the params via FlashVars and they were fed an Assy greeting full of wisdom.

Now I have to point out that for those who aren’t comfortable with things that contain a lewd sense of humor to the tune of the South Park genre, the app is definitely not for you. If it’s any forewarning, the character the e-card is based on is a pair of legs and a backside. So with that said, for those who think they may get a good laugh, send your friends some Assy!.

Have you ever wanted to manipulate a url request on the fly (change the header, modify query params, etc.)? The reasons for doing this can vary from production debugging to manipulating requests made by another site. Though I haven’t really seen it highlighted, Charles, one of the common tools used by Flash developers for monitoring HTTP traffic has this feature built in. The feature is called rewriting and is quite easy to use.

To explain how to use this feature, I’ll illustrate it with a technique that tricks the Target.com store into telling you where all the Nintendo Wii’s are in your area.

STEPS

1. Open Tools -> Rewrite from the application menu
2. Select Enabled
3. Add a Set, name it Target Wiis, which just gives a label for you to recognize the requests you want to match
4. Add a Host, use *.target.com, which will match all request made by target.com
5. Add a Rule
   - select type Modify Query Param
   - in match’s name field type asin (we are going to replace the query param asin with our own custom param)
   - in new’s value field type B0009VXBAQ (we are going to replace the product identifier with a Wii console, so we can view results for Wii’s in the area)
   - click ok
6. Go to a product page on Target.com that has a Find at Stores button (sample product page)
7. Enable Charles, click the find store button, enter your zip code, the results will not show the product that you clicked but the locations of Nintendo Wiis instead.

This is a great feature, especially if you are wanting to do general request changes. However, if you are doing specific query parameter changes and don’t want to set them up as a stored process, I’d recommend the FireFox plugin Tamper Data. The plugin allows you to view the request data laid out in a form and change it as it is being requested instead of setting it up before hand.

Hopefully this can help someone with their debugging/development process as well as give those searching for a Wii a little trick to use to their advantage.

I will presenting “Time Shifting Entertainment” at FITC Toronto 2007, that takes place April 22-24, 2007 in Toronto, Canada at the Toronto Hilton. The presentation tends to be a pretty high level discussion about media consumption and distribution shifts. It starts with a look at history, transitioning into what is currently happening with media, and finally gives a personal forcast for the future. The media I focus on is video, but the principles can be applied to others as well. The presentation doesn’t get to technical, though I do show some personal application examples (ex:Cartoon Network Video, Toonami Jetstream, Adult Swim Fix, and the CBS Affiliates’ video integrations) and explain elements they contain that are key for them being viewed as a success.

The presentation is a little dated, with some of the future predictions actually occurring now. I may update it, and also add in recent work done with SonyBMG, Playstation America, SuperDeluxe, and others. I’m hoping to keep it interesting to a more technical audience, as well as still appeal to the more general one. Regardless, I’m excited to be presenting and look forward to seeing everyone in Toronto.

For the past few years, most everything I’ve read has been technical. This past year I decided to feed the other part of my scholastic upbringing by reading business oriented books as well. Though I still maintained a healthy technical intake, that reading was reserved to documentation and online materials. For those with any curiousity, below is the list of some of the books I read during 2006 in no particular order.

1. Automatic Millionaire

2. Smart Couples Finish Rich

3. Rich Dad, Poor Dad

4. The Road Ahead

5. iCon Steve Jobs

6. Losing My Virginity

7. Business the Richard Branson Way

8. The Long Tail

9. Joel on Software

10. The Google Story

11. Don’t Make Me Think

12. Growing a Business

13. The Elements of User Experience

14. Getting Real

Turner has a new comedy broadband network, SuperDeluxe, in the works. Other announcements detail out what exactly it is, so I won’t give a full briefing here.

What I will say is that I have been involved with the project alongside my friends Todd Dominey, Robert Occhialini, and their talented crews. It should be interesting to see what a corporate entity can produce in a world that seems to be drastically changing from non corporate influences.

Look for SuperDeluxe to drop soon, in the meantime go play with my bubbles ;).