Hi Uncle Cheese,

I aiming to play background music continuously upon load of the website. I would just like to put a play and stop button somewhere on the page so the user has the option to turn it off. Is this possible with this release you made or is there something else I should try?

Thank you in advance again!

No, I don't intend to ever support that. It's a horrible and annoying feature to add to a website, and I'd hate to be part of the problem. You really need to consider the users. It's their website, not yours. You're just going to send them into a panic, looking for the mute button when they get to your site. That's the best case scenario. More likely, they'll hit the back button.

I can speak for millions of Internet users when I say I find only animated background images more annoying than music playing that I didn't ask for -- music that collides with whatever song I have playing in my iTunes at the time. It's gut wrenching, really.

Be kind to your users. Let them opt into a sensory experience like music. If they want to hear it, they'll adjust their volume, put on their headphones, and hit the play button. Don't force it on them. Please, please, don't force it on them!

</rant>

Uncle Cheese for President!
Edit On a more serious note: I fully agree with UncleCheese here. Music that plays without being requested is simply a pain in the ass.

Hi UC and everyone,

For this project, I'm running SS 2.4.5 and latest DOM from GitHub. When I upload an FLV, MP3 or Choose From Existing, it still has the 'File' Classname in the DB. If I update it manually, it works great! Same as in UC's video.

I'm wondering if it could be related to the 'many_many' patch you put in 2-3 days ago, UC. Thoughts?

I'm continuing to investigate.

Thanks UC, for all of your generous work!
Wilson

Yeah, the automatic "upgrades" to FLV/MP3 have been phased out. You need to cast the relation as 'FLV' or 'MP3' explicitly in order to get that functionality.

I know it seems silly, but as a matter of best practice, it didn't make sense for the interface to be dictating details about your model.

UC: Firstly, Thanks for all your useful modules.

I'm having trouble with getting the FFMPEG flv encode working.

FLV::echo_ffmpeg_test(); outputs "FFMPEG is installed on your server and working properly. Code: "

I know that it finds it, because on the server Windows Task Manager shows ffpmeg running, but it stalls during the encode. CPU resources shows it runs, then stalls. I eventually have to end the process manually in the task manager.

My FLV has a very small filesize (which ends up being about 1 seconds of video). If I copy-and-paste the command out of the ffmpeg_log.txt into a CMD box, the encode runs fine. The only thing I see in the log that might be an issue is "WARNING: The bitrate parameter is set too low. It takes bits/s as argument, not kbits/s".

Is there a specific version of ffmpeg that's recommended? I've tried the latest and greatest Static version, as well as some older versions I had for other sites I've used ffmpeg. Same results.

Have any suggestions on where to look for issues?

Thanks in advance,

EDIT: (I accidentally deleted my original reply)

I've resolved my issue by using shell_exec instead of proc_open for the ffpmeg execution (editing line ~72 of FLV.php). I doubt this is ideal.

Any ideas of consequences or a proper fix would be appreciated. :)