FLV not streaming

I was working on a project that used streaming Flash video. Tested it locally and the videos streamed fine. Uploaded it to our client directory and they still streamed fine. Uploaded them to the client’s site and…nothing. No video showing up at all. Did some checking, uploaded a test to make sure there was no security issues on the server with loaded content. The SWF would load fine, but not the FLV. A little Googling and I found out that the problem was most likely with the client’s server. It seems that Microsoft Windows 2003 Server will not stream FLV files. The solution is to change the MIME types on the server to include the “flv” extension. A quick call to tech support and viola! Streaming FLVs. Here is a link to a good explanation of the probem. Gotta love Microsoft.

My emails’s not working!

So a client frantically called saying that their email isn’t working. A quick check and it turns out the whole site was down. Further checking revealed the problem was that the domain name had expired. Called the client and asked where they had registered the domain name. Huh? After explaining what I meant, they said they had absolutely no idea. Another design company had registered it years ago and they didn’t have the information. Lesson to learn: Make sure you know who has your domain.

Fix for Quicktime video playback glitch

So a client gave us a Quicktime video file that was fairly large (150 mb) but not huge. When I went to play it back, it would stop and kind of stutter half way through. I figured it got corrupted, so I had the client re-upload it…and the new one was doing the same thing. On a whim, I exported it as a new Quicktime movie. Even though this new file ended up much larger (420 mb) it plays fine now. Strange.

Tracking subfolders with Google Analytics

So I was setting up Google Analytics for a client. The client’s site has one main landing page and from there goes to 4 subfolders that each contain a new site. Naturally, the client wanted to be able to track these subfolders separately. So I went through Analytics and found the “Filters” section. Perfect, you can filter your results to only show traffic to a subdirectory. So I set them up and waited the required 24 hours for data to come in. And…nothing. So I did some more poking around and couldn’t find any reason why they wouldn’t be working. On a hunch, I put the javascript tracking code into the homepage of one of the subfolders I wanted to track. Waited the 24 hours, and presto! I was getting good data. It turns out that you have to put the tracking code into each homepage that you want to track. No word on this in the documentation, but hey, it’s free!

2 different date formats in a Coldfusion if statement

So I was pulling in date entries from a MySQL database and needed to display the date differently via Coldfusion depending on which group the entry belonged to. For the “yearly” entries, I only wanted to show the year, for the rest, I wanted the standard “7/22/2007″ format. The solution? Put in a cfif that checked to see which group the entry belonged to. Depending on which one, the varaible would be formatted differently, like so:

<cfif #VARIABLES.subSelected# is 3>
<cfset formatdate = dateformat(date, “yyyy”)>
<cfelse>
<cfset formatdate = dateformat(date, “m/d/yyyy”)>
</cfif>

Codec Woes

So I was processing videos for a client’s site (converting avi’s to flv’s) when one of them came up as completely blank after opening it in Quicktime. I got the “Some necessary components are missing” message with a link to the Codec page on the Quicktime website. Only problem – no indication of which codec I needed. Having a suspicion that it was some Windows-only thing, I had a co-worker open the file on his pc. Turns out that it was encoded in a format that I had never seen before-TSCC, a Screen Capture Codec developed by a company called TechSmith. So I went to the company’s website, and alas no download for Mac…back to square one.

301 redirect

So one of our big clients is moving all of their sites onto one domain. Which led to lots of digging about the best way to redirect visitors to the new location, while still preserving the search engine rankings. A 301 (permanent) redirect is definitely the best way to go. I went with an htaccess file. A simple line of code (Redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.you.com/new.html), save it as “.htaccess”, upload it to the server and you’re set. This site has some pretty good info about this and other ways of doing redirects: http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redirect-web-pages/

Requiem for Director

It’s a shame Macromedia (now Adobe) have stopped development of Director and Shockwave. The last version came out in 2004, and there are no plans to keep it going. I used Director a few years ago and found it to be a really cool program, especially when it comes to user interactivity. You can directly access ports, cameras and microphones on a computer with minimal coding. Also, Shockwave really is the way to go when it comes to making 3d games like this: http://www.miniclip.com/games/hot-rods/en/. So long, Director.

Full Screen Flash

Came across this nice example of a full screen Flash video. This is from the BBC and is used as a promo vid for the company. Just hit “maximize” and the video fills your screen without chrome. You will need Flash player 9 to view it.

http://www.flashcomguru.com/apps/fullscreen_player9/fullscreen.html

Transparent Gradients in Illustrator

Sometimes just trying to do the simplest task in Illustrator isn’t so simple. Example: Creating a circular gradient that goes from a solid color to transparent and whose gradient can be adjusted independently. After digging around for a solution, I came across this link that has a nicely illustrated explanation: http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/transparent_gradients_in_illustrator_cscs2.html
Some nice info in the “Recent Tips” section on the right hand side as well.