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Brightcove News: Trial Accounts, Open Positions, and Usability

2009-06-09T04:44:32Z

Trial accounts: I think that Brightcove has had 30-day trial accounts for awhile, but we've been promoting them a lot more recently. If you want to check out what we've done in Flex and Flash, sign on up. Brightcove is Hiring: If you're in Boston or Beijing, we have some positions open right now that you may want to look at for QA, system engineering, and project management. I bring this up only to help out Brightcove and my blog readers in the current job market, and of course not at all because your mentioning of my name gives me a referral bonus. New Brightcove.com: The website was revamped lately, including all the technical sections. There are reorganized docs (a great improvement), training videos, portals, portals, and more portals. It's been redone with Drupal, which will help more of us make changes faster. Usability studies: There are always usability studies going on at Brightcove, and we're always looking for customers to put under the microscope or send in a suggestion or two.

Flash Builder 4: It's Fast

2009-06-09T01:53:19Z

I just did some stopwatch performance tests of Flash Builder 4 against Flex Builder 3, using the same files that I did for the faster Flex 3 SDK tests. Here are the results: Build All, in seconds, after changing two UI classes Flex 3: 42.5 Flex 3 fast: 36 Flex 4: 38 Flex 4 with libraries: 26.5 Build All, in seconds, after changing a ModelLocator Flex 3: 47 Flex 3 fast: 36.5 Flex 4: 34 Flex 4 with libraries: 26 The projects with libraries were very impressive. For these admittedly simple performance tests, I'm seeing the best Flex 4 project as 70% faster than the regular Flex 3 project. The "Flex 3 fast" and "Flex 4" results are so similar because some of the improvements are already in Faster Flex 3 SDK. This was unexpected to me, so I ran a few more tests. Sure enough, some more complicated compilations showed more of an improvement for Flex 4. The "Flex 4 with libraries" test took advantage of the library sharing and other multiple project work that has gone into Flash Builder 4. The project that I was building was divided into three library projects and one main project. The library projects only have acyclical dependencies, which likely made the compilation easier. More details on the test: the Flex 3 tests were done in Flex Builder 3 using 3.2 or the modified version of 3.2 from the faster Flex 3 SDK page. The Flex 4 tests were done in the beta of Flash Builder 4. The project was simply converted for Flash Builder 4, and only two simple changes to the code were needed to build the project. I only reran two of the three tests from the Faster Flex SDK page for no good reason. I ran each build a few times and averaged out the results.

Image Effects in AS3

2009-05-25T17:46:18Z

If you want to know more about manipulating images in Flash, I have an excellent new book to recommend. It's Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Image Effects by Todd Yard, a coworker of mine at Brightcove. I was the technical editor of the book, and I really enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about a lot of AS3 APIs that I haven't used before. It goes over the basic drawing API, blend modes, many other bitmap manipulations, Pixel Bender, the Flash Player 10 3D APIs, a custom (and newly open sourced) animation and effects library, text effects, video effects, and more that I'm sure I'm leaving out. Outside of the book, there's the new library I just mentioned as well as a huge numbers of samples that can be used in Authoring or Flex/Flash Builder. This is in the same series (and a great followup) to Keith Peter's ever-popular Making Things Move book.

Brightcove News: Audio Players, the State of Advertising, and More

2009-05-18T12:58:37Z

Dev articles There are new development articles about using ads without an ad server and dynamically loading a player in Javascript. You can find more articles on the developer blog. New Brightcove blog I just found out about Ashley Streb's blog, and given he's my manager at Brightcove, I will say it's the most fantastic blog of all time. Seriously, though, check it out as as it has a lot of good info on video sitemaps, creating BEML components in Flex, and EC2. Audio support Now leaving the video-only world, Brightcove 3 has some support for audio players, as shown in a Universal Music player. On the VUDU And leaving the browser (although not for the first time), Brightcove will start showing up on the VUDU set top box, starting with Sony's music videos. InSkin ads I found InSkin ads fascinating because the team working on the Brightcove ad API hadn't even heard of it until it was up on a major website. We're seeing more and more partners that can develop ad solutions without any of our internal development, thanks to our fantastic ad APIs. (Did I mention I worked on them?) And the resulting ads look really good. The state of ads Not directly related to Brightcove, but I'm always reading interesting articles about advertising, and there's been a few more than using lately. It's ranged from the perpetual sizing news to the sky is falling to practical advice

Wordle

2009-04-25T14:16:24Z

I can't remember the last time I used a Java applet, and so I couldn't help but post about Wordle, a fun (and perhaps useful) way to spend a few minutes. The site provides a lot of options for creating word clouds from text or links. The image above is from the site and is created from just entering http://deitte.com. The one annoying part of the site is that I had to use a screen capture program, Bug Shooting, in order to get the image to embed. But you can link to word images you create on their site. Wordle can also be helpful for surveys or other text from customers to visualize the responses. I found the site via Caren Cioffi at Brightcove through Yammer, and she was using it for this purpose.

The Demand for IFrames in Flex

2009-04-25T13:49:34Z

No matter what I've tried, the demand for iframes in Flex doesn't go away. Recently there's been a number of interesting comments on an old post of mine about Embedding HTML in a Flex application using an IFrame. Dennis wrote new instructions for using the code in Flex Builder 3, ariel linked to an issue with Firefox zooming, and Kedungwuluh linked to an example application. All of these comments come after I've essentially stopped commenting on the iframe posts that I've written. There's also some great alternatives, as linked in the Embedding HTML post, which have had more active development than my solution. And most importantly, I've written Don't Use IFrames for HTML in Flex which I prominently link to in the Embedding HTML post. But my passive and active attempts at moving people away from the iframe post hasn't worked at all. The post is consistently the most popular on this blog, getting about 3500 views a month, and the 159 comments keep growing. Of course, writing all this new information isn't going to help, but I don't think it really matters. Obviously the solution is good enough for a lot of people. And there's a lot of people still searching for a really good solution for HTML in Flex.

Brightcove and Adobe Announce Alliance

2009-04-20T14:24:46Z

I was happy to see the announcement of a strategic alliance between Brightcove and Adobe. The alliance will focus on a few areas: long-form HD video, content protection for video, Adobe Creative Suite integration, collaboration on Adobe's new player framework (known as Strobe), and some sales and marketing collaboration. Since I came from Adobe about two and half years ago and use Flex and Flash every day, it's not too surprising that I'm excited to see Brightcove have an even stronger relationship with Adobe. I'll also be very interested in checking out Strobe more to see the ways that we can work with it. You can read some more about the alliance in an interview with Jeff Whatcott.

Boston Flash Platform User and Design Patterns and Beer at Brightcove Group

2009-04-12T20:57:55Z

The Flash platform user group at the Brightcove office has been going through a bit of an identity crisis lately. The sessions used to be focused on design patterns, but lately we've been veering off into the general Flash platform territory. This has led to some great talks, but it's a little confusing. It can't be called the Boston Flash Platform Group, as this is an offshoot of the meeting in Brookline. So how about my name in the title of the post? Everyone will remember BFPUDPBBG. In any case, the group is always looking for good speakers, whether it's talking about design patterns, a new open source project you're working on, or anything else you can dream up about Flash and Flex. Want to talk? Send an email on to boston.flash.platform@gmail.com, and Sam Robbins (or if he's busy, Doug Martilla or me) will get back to you. Want to learn more about the group? Join the mailing list, which will also tell you about the meetings in Brookline. We're always happy to welcome new people to the group, whether for one meeting or every month. You'll always learn some new things, have some pizza and beer, and can join us at Characters after the meeting. Check the mailing to make sure, but they almost always occur the first Wednesday of the month at 7pm. They're at the Brightcove office, which is right near the Kendall Square subway at One Cambridge Center. Just go inside the building and tell the security officer why you're there. You can then go up to the 12th floor and someone will let you in.

Bindable Getters and Getting Faster

2009-04-12T20:44:03Z

We had a "bring your questions" session at our last Boston Flash User Group meeting at Brightcove, and I thought three of the items I answered would be helpful for more people to read. Bindable Getters: If you're creating a component for someone else to use, you don't have to expose a setter for a bindable property. It's not very obvious that you can just expose a getter from the documentation, but it's simple to do. When you set up the getter, name the event for the Bindable property:

[Bindable(event="changeMyProp")]
public function get myProp():String {
  return _myProp;
}

Then when you set the value for the property, dispatch the named event. That's it:

 _myProp = "my value";
// dispatch the event so that bound listeners know about the change
dispatchEvent(new Event("changeMyProp"));

Public MXML: Also on the subject of creating components, it was asked whether one should choose MXML or ActionScript for a class that's being used as a component. In general, I suggest to use ActionScript. This is because of all the public variables that are exposed when you use MXML, since all of the UI elements set up in the XML are public. This violates the open/closed principle and can be a problem for components that are used outside of a small project. Fast and Stable: If you've been unsure if you can use the Faster Flex SDK for your own project, it should make you feel better that it's being used to build the Brightcove players that run on the New Yorks Times and many other major websites. So if you're concerned about the stability of the changes, I wouldn't worry about it. It's also being used at Brightcove to build some very large Flex manager applications without any problems.

I'm on The Flex Show

2009-03-26T02:35:33Z

I'm on the latest episode of The Flex Show, where I talk about making changes to the Flex SDK and the Faster Flex 3 SDK. It was a lot of fun to do the interview with Jeffry Houser and John Wilker, and I'm glad they gave me the opportunity to do this. They've interviewed nearly everyone I read or admire in the Flex world, so make sure to check out the other podcasts if you haven't already. Thankfully they cut out the part where my phone rings and the other amusing parts. Although I need to respond to one of those missing pieces: yes Juan Sanchez, I do like quesadillas.

Brightcove News: New Release, .NET SDK, and More Blogs

2009-03-25T14:29:28Z

"Watching" video online: Ryan Stewart had a good post about the differences in watching video online. It made me think of a recent experiment to put the Brightcove player in a 3D environment and the other BEML and API uses I've been seeing. Brightcove 3.2: A new release of Brightcove came out over the weekend, and you can read about all of the module and API changes in the link. .NET SDK: Adding to the PHP, Python, and JS SDKs for the Brightcove APIs, there's now a .NET version. Ad inventory: Both streaming media and Jeremy's blog had some thoughts on online video ad inventory. More Brightcove meetups: I had a great time at the New York meetup (I'm the blurry guy in the lower-left corner). There's more coming up. Actually, now that I read that last post again, I see there's only one meetup that's left, so book your flight to London tonight. Japan and Comics: Brightcove showed off the many customers in Japan, and Marvel was highlighted on NewTeeVee. Blogs blogs blogs: Jeremy Allaire wrote about the many Brightcove blogs that can now be found on blog.brightcove.com. The blogs aren't just about Brightcove, and you can check them out for a number of insightful posts on video. There's other Brightcove blogs off of the site, and you can read about Flex and Brightcove from Oscar Cortes, Al Manning, Bob de Wit, and of course me.

Flex SDK Hackery

2009-03-12T01:33:17Z

I presented at the Boston Flash Platform User Group (Brightcove office edition) tonight as a last-minute fill-in. I put together the following presentation which gives details on making changes to the Flex SDK. It doesn't have too much information in it, but people at the meeting asked for it to be posted for the links. And it should fit in well with my upcoming interview on The Flex Show.

SDK Hackery

View more presentations from bdeitte.

U2's Flash Site

2009-03-12T01:20:20Z

In honor of U2 playing in Boston tonight, here's some emails between my wife and me today. She's a big U2 fan and just found they're playing again in Boston in September. Betsy wrote: This is the stage- this is amazing! http://360.u2.com/ Brian wrote: They need to work on their programming skills, got a Flash error in the debugging version of the Flash player. :P TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference. at Main/initSound() at Main/init() at Main/frame5() Brian wrote: Well that's cool though, that's some good Flash 3D. I bet they are using Papervision3D, what everyone is using for 3D in Flash. Betsy wrote: Could we talk about U2?

Brightcove News: NYC Meetup, Python Library, and More

2009-02-23T12:44:53Z

As I mentioned last week I'm going to try to group together the Brightcove and video news I find and post it a bit more regularly. Well, the news has been overflowing, so it's time for another post. NYC Meetup: Want to see me and other Brightcovians in New York? We'll be there on March 13th. Brightcove API in Python: StudioNow created a Python library for the Brightcove API. It's exciting to see projects like this grow organically for Brightcove. And PHP and Javascript: Speaking of the APIs, Brian Franklin and Matthew Congrove created wrappers for PHP and for JavaScript. Jeremy Allaire's new blog: Jeremy Allaire has a new blog which already has a lot of long and insightful posts on it. You can ready about the difficult economics of long tail video and whether online video is a cost center. Brightcove A-Twitter: Brightcove is twittering. You can subscribe to Brightcove, Jeremy, and I'm sure others. Tremor Gets $18M: Tremor, the advertising network that Brightcove uses for the Brightcove Basic edition raised $18M in funding. Advertising articles: Last but not least, you can check out some articles I wrote on the developer center. The Brightcove Advertising SDK gives a good technical overview of the Brightcove advertising system. Ads and Custom Player Templates explains how to use custom BEML and ads. Player Logging gives tips on figuring out advertising problems in a Brightcove player.

Fighting Brain Crack: Goodbye swclibrary.com

2009-02-22T16:20:27Z

I read John Wilker's post on fighting brain crack, getting rid of the ideas that stick around in your head forever even though nothing is done with them. Immediately one thing came to mind: swclibrary.com I registered this domain name, along with swclib.com, in October of 2005. I was working on the Flex team at the time, and my development of compc and asdoc led me to see the need for a good component site for Flex. I was envisioning something like ScaleNine (which wasn't around yet) for SWCs. Through the years, I've held on the domain name and some notes on the idea. And through the years, other components sites have come along:

FlexBox, which isn't being updated anymore but which still brings in a surprising number of hits to my blog for the HTML component.
Adobe Flex Exchange , which has a grab-bag of components, themes, and applications.
FlexLib, which isn't really a component site but a group of open source components that a lot of people use.
The flex.org component site, which probably has the best list but which needs some interface love.

None of the sites felt quite right to me, so I kept the idea around. Then another big change to Flex got me thinking about it again, as the Gumbo component model will bring about a whole new set of components. I still had it somewhere in my head when I recently saw Jeffry Houser's FlexTras, but the idea is so far back there that the idea didn't move an inch. So it's time to come clean with myself. My off-work computer time has been full of Brightcove dabbling or blogging, and I plan to keep it that way. The domain names won't be renewed, I'll delete all my notes, and I'll keep fighting the good fight against brain crack.