[Pro] Remote Movie

I would like to put some quicktime videos on my site. In FWP, this is a snap.

However, what I want to do is have the movie on another server. I assume this is possible, but how?

—Ted


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

I’m struggling to think of how you could do this in Freeway without resorting to some draconian measures like using Source Code Snooper (or a text editor) to rewrite the Freeway-generated object/embed tag. I’m also not sure if the JavaScript that Freeway uses to generate the embed (and thus work around Internet Explorer’s weirdness) would not error out if you did this, because your code was trying to access a foreign URL.

But to try, what I would do is publish your page (be sure to set the Output to More Readable in the Document Setup dialog before you do, so you don’t go blind searching through one long line of code), then open it in a programmer’s text editor, like the free and fabulous TextWrangler from http://barebones.com and locate any references to your movie.

These will probably look something like src="Resources/yourMovie.mov" or something similar. Try editing that line, replacing the Resources/yourMovie.mov part with an absolute URI to the QuickTime file on the other server.

Save the altered file, and use an FTP application like Transmit or Cyberduck to replace the Freeway-generated version on your server, overwriting the Freeway original as you do.

Then test from your server. I’m pretty sure that any errors that will occur will only expose themselves if you are viewing the page from a Web server. Previewing locally is a completely different security context and you might not see any issues, while others will.

If this works, then you will need to repeat this incantation each time you publish your site, because Freeway will notice that you changed the file, and will overwrite your changes with the original code.

You can step around this problem if you plan to alter the other pages in your site, but don’t want to change the movie page, by making a copy of the text-edited version of the file and moving it outside of your local Site Folder. Once that copy is safely stashed somewhere else, Freeway will no longer overwrite it, and you can simply copy the altered file up to your server after each upload from Freeway.

Walter


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Okay, major embarrassment. This is so very easy to do in Freeway
(without a text editor) that it’s not even funny. The only down-side
is that in order to make it work, you have to have a movie the exact
same size as your remote movie (or the same movie) in your Freeway
page so the proper code will be written out.

Draw an HTML box on the page, import your movie, set he autoplay,
controller, etc. options how you would like them. Then, with the movie
selected, choose Item / Extended from the main menu.

Make sure that the Embed segment of the tabs is highlighted, then
press New. In the Name field, enter src (just like that, lower-case).
In the Value field, enter a complete canonical URI to your movie on
the other server, like http://walterdavisstudio.com/ann/Resources/ann.mov

Okay out of the stack of dialogs and publish. Whatever movie you used
to make the controls will be uploaded to your server, but when the
page is loaded, that movie will be replaced with the URI you entered
for the other movie. As long as these two movies have the same
dimensions, you are all set.

Walter

On Jul 18, 2010, at 11:15 AM, waltd wrote:

I’m struggling to think of how you could do this in Freeway without
resorting to some draconian measures like using Source Code Snooper
(or a text editor) to rewrite the Freeway-generated object/embed tag


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Walt —

Works perfectly. Let me add some information here for those who might come upon this later.

The reason for doing this in my case is that I have a hosting company that has limits on disk space and traffic. Meanwhile, I have my MobileMe account that is just sitting there.

Put your files on your iDisk, in the Sites folder. Then that file can be addressed this way:

http://homepage.mac.com/yourmacname/yourmoviername.mp4

Some informal tests show that streaming from that location is pretty darn fast.

Thank you Walt. I hope this will be useful to someone else.

—Ted


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Also…

If you are moving large files to and from your iDisk, you probably want to avoid the Finder. If you have a WebDav-capable FTP client, use that.

I’m told Transmit has this. I used Interarchy. Fetch does not support WebDav (yet).

—Ted


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Just to finally wrap this up for those searching the list archives…

A goal is to lower the space and streaming load of the site’s host. To do that, you need a small version of the movie that is command-E imported into the frame. This smaller version gets put in the resources folder and uploaded to the site. It is not used at all, because the window calls the larger file from the remote location.

This smaller file in my case was made by trimming the movie. It has to have the same name and occupy the same size frame.

This works well.

—Ted


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Thanks for following up like this. It’s very thoughtful!

Walter

On Jul 22, 2010, at 5:24 PM, tedg wrote:

Just to finally wrap this up for those searching the list archives…


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Hi Ted,
This sounds like a job for an action. :slight_smile:
I’ve been thinking about updating the Remote Resources action to allow
for specific items (movies, downloads, etc) to go to specific
locations rather than doing all of the resources in a wholesale fashion.
Regards,
Tim.

On 22 Jul 2010, at 22:24, tedg wrote:

This smaller file in my case was made by trimming the movie. It has
to have the same name and occupy the same size frame.

FreewayActions.com - Freeware and commercial actions for Freeway
Express & Pro.

Protect your mailto links from being harvested by spambots with Anti
Spam.
Only available at FreewayActions.com

http://www.freewayactions.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Tim —

For what it is worth…

My vote is for you to spend your time on actions that do things that I cannot possibly do otherwise. This remote movie thing is so easy to do.

Coming back to FWP for serious work really puts this into perspective for me: we groundlings really do benefit from the combination of what SoftPress gives us, plus you action writers and advisors.

I actually have something I would like you mavens to tackle, something I couldn’s do myself. I’ll start a new thread for it.

Thanks to all you, Ted


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options