program design

[franko]

I have a program that is organized like a book with chapters and subchapters. The subchapters are the basic unit, which contain a sound file (a voice over)lasting around 2 minutes each. needless to say these take some time to download completely. I do have them compressed so that they can play on a 56k modem streaming so there is no delay.

the question I have is how should I organize this so that when a user clicks on a chapter the program goes there without delay, and when clicking on a subchapter it also goes there without delay.

I have been looking at preloaders, which either load all the files. I can do this, but it takes a while for all these files (no one with 56k modem would wait this long). I have been using the loadmovie() command which loads a chapter, but it does so sequentially, so if I jump to a frame label not yet loaded it jumps to the last frame currently loaded

any suggestions for organization/ actionscripting?

[Jesse]

Can't you just put every chapter in it's own SWF and load that SWF on demand. Or have two buttons, and the user selects frist the chapter then the subchapter and your clip movie loads the appropriate MC.

Like:
loadMovieNum ("ch" + chapter + "_sub" +sub + ".swf", 1);

If chapter 1 and sub chapter 3 was slected, that would load the file called:

ch1_sub3.swf

Cheers

Jesse

[franko]

actually I think I solved the problem for the most part. What I did was make each subchapter (the lowest level) an swf of its own. Each of the buttons that takes you to any subchapter then does a loadmovie at that time. I load them all into level 1, so they overwrite each other, so only one plays at a time.

this has a few benificial effects.

1.rather than having to wait for movies to load the buttons are displayed quickly, and the user can choose the next button right away.

2. when the button is pressed there is only a few second delay before the subchapter starts, since it streams. most of these file are about .5-1 mb since there is 2-4 minutes of voice over

3. once the movie is played it is stored in cache and when selected again plays quicly.

Is this a standard design/setup for this type of application?

[Jesse]

Well I've not seen an audio book in Flash before but it sounds like a logical layout to me. Most poeople use loadMovies nowadays to kepe their bandwidth consumption down unless a user requests more data.

Cheers

Jesse

[franko]

feel free to take a look and see how it performs for you. It is not just a web site, but rather a program for teaching.

orginally I was making these in director, but due to the high cost of up grading both a mac and pc, I have switched to flash (works on both platforms in browser)

feel free to take a look. I don't know if anyone is doing anything else like this.

http://www.cybertime.net/~lombano/mc