Video editing inside flash player!? Is it in any way possible?

[Elz]

Yeah, my lovely employers here want me to make a web enabled video/audio editting app. I have to admit, it makes me cry a little. I'm assuming they'll want to save out the bloody thing as well once it's been editted. Can Flash or Flex or indeed any web technology at all handle this? Go on, just say no. I dare you!

help me :(

[tg]

no

[iknow]

if by "editting" you mean cutting out a piece from a movie clip e.g. avi, mpg. mov... and turn it into an .flv clip, then Yes. Other than that, no.

[tg]

hehe... there you go a real answer.... i was just accepting the dare.

[Elz]

tg: :p

iKnow, thanks for the reply! what I meant was pretty much what you said: Being able to slice a video file into various pieces, join different bits together to eliminate certain sections, cut down the video and so on, and then save it out (if it has to be an flv, then so be it), all within flash player. I really didn't think it possible, but hey what do I know!? I assume if it could do that with mpg, avi, mov etc and then save it out to flv, it would also be able to perform the same operations on an flv in the first case? That way at least if they have to save it out as flv, they can edit it again...

[mswertfager]

Hi Elz,

Did you ever make this...cause I am looking to do the same. And would love some advice.

-Michael

[panel]

Using only Flash it's not possible. The only way to do this is to create interface in client Flash app and server-side logic to cut video.

[wvxvw]

This isn't really true, but, there are limitations: you can assemble video in few simple formats, like MJPEG for example. You could edit sound, in some simple / free formats, like OGG. But you have to also understand that you would have to do a lot of tricks when rendering (composing) the preview for the user - Flash doesn't allow you to wisely manage resources (CPU / Memory), so, rendering a few seconds movie from raw BitmapData may insult even the best CPUs out there in the market.

So, the precise answer is: it is not impossible, but you are going to work hard and, sometimes, invent stuff (i.e. there are no ready-made solutions for that, in Flash). This would be a serious undertaking, but, again, if you think that Windows Movie Maker is a video editing software, then you can make a video editor in Flash.

[drkstr]

Anything is possible! It just depends how bad you want it. ;)

Using only Flash it's not possible. The only way to do this is to create interface in client Flash app and server-side logic to cut video.
This is spot on (well technically it IS possible, just impractical).

Edit the data, not the media!

The way to go about it would be to push the actual video editing/encoding functionality onto the server. The flash client would simply be the UI. For example, you can use ffmpeg to break a video up into low-res images, then serve them to the client along with some other info about the video. This way you only need to load the images in the current view, and any edit operations can be delegated back to the server. You will probably want to keep videos in both a "source format" (the data/thumbnails) and a published format (the actual media) since the encoding process will be time consuming.

[panel]

This is spot on (well technically it IS possible, just impractical).

You are true mind reader :cool: