Building things

blogware: Like radio.blog, but for Mac and movies, too

Mac users who couldn't figure out how to get radio.blog working should check out flash AV.

- sets up on both Mac and PC

- has more functionality than radio.blog (supports MP3, SWF, JPG, and MID files, has key controls for nav)

- has a number of skins to use

- doesn't require any file conversion (though you'll probably wanna downsize your mp3s to a lower kbps so they don't kill your bandwidth)

- comes with much better documentation (though I haven't found a user forum yet, but I haven't really looked since all my questions so far have been covered in the doc)

You can get it up and running just by uploading the default files; you can set up your own tunes by editing the playlist in /media (there's an XML generator available if you don't want to do it by hand), then uploading that and your MP3s.

Only downside is that, according to the author, the demo version you download expires the first of each month, when a new version is released; I'm not sure if this means you simply have to upgrade at that point or if it stops working altogether -- I guess I'll find out Monday -- but you can get the non-expiring verion by making a donation of 15 euros (about $30, I think), which isn't much for such a cool little app.

Making multiple playlists on the same install
Assumes a degree of comfort working with raw mark-up

You can put all the songs in the same directory, if you want, or not, and you can use the same song on however many playlists, just make sure you specify the correct location of the song in the playlist (e.g. if you're using songs from multiple directories on your playlist, don't use the subfolders variable in the PLAYLIST tag, and do use full URLs to the files in the TRACK tag -- see below for examples).

1. Make a new playlist in /media. Should be named whatever_playlist.xml
ex. 80sladies_playlist.xml
I'm pretty sure the underscore isn't necessary, it just looks for whatever comes before "playlist", just make sure in steps below that you use exact same prefix...

2. Make a copy of the html page of the player of your choice in the top dir (I used av_aqua.html as the original)*

3. Change name of that to whatever.html (ex. 80sladies.html)

4. Open your whatever.html in text editor, look for the instances of the filePrefx variable -- there are two:
param name="movie" value="av_aqua.swf?filePrefX=onlyAudio_&custom=true"
and
embed src="av_aqua.swf?filePrefX=onlyAudio_&custom=true"

5. Change "onlyAudio_" to whatever you named the new playlist file. ex. I changed "onlyAudio_" to "80sladies_":
param name="movie" value="av_aqua.swf?filePrefX=80sladies_&custom=true"
and
embed src="av_aqua.swf?filePrefX=80sladies_&custom=true"

* some of the default players don't have the filePrefx variable, so they pull the plain playlist.xml, just stick "filePrefX=onlyAudio_&" in there to use a different playlist, ex. change:
av_basic.swf?custom=true
to
av_basic.swf?filePrefX=onlyAudio_&custom=true

6. Upload your new whatever.html into the top dir, your new whatever_playlist.xml into /media, and whatever songs into wherever you specified in your playlist.

7. Hit up http://yourdomain.com/yourflashAVdir/whatever.html et voila!
ex. http://ofrenda.org/canciones/yow/80sladies.html

An example of a playlist with all play files in one directory
The subfolder variable should reflect the directory within /media where you uploaded your MP3s or other files.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<PLAYLISTdb>

<PLAYLIST name="Your title" author="Your name" subfolder="whatever">
<TRACK name="First track name" Url="whatever1.mp3"/>
<TRACK name="Second track name" Url="whatever2.mp3"/>
</PLAYLIST>
</PLAYLISTdb>

An example of a playlist with play files in more than one directory
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<PLAYLISTdb>

<PLAYLIST name="Your title" author="Your name">
<TRACK name="First track name" Url="http://yourdomain.com/yourflashAVdir/directory/whatever1.mp3"/>
<TRACK name="Second track name" Url="http://yourdomain.com/yourflashAVdir/anotherdirectory/whatever2.mp3"/>
</PLAYLIST>
</PLAYLISTdb>

--gwen, October 30, 2004 | Discuss (0) | Ping (0)