webcam plus timer

We made an installation of all the computers in the class room using the webcam activity. A plan was made up by Rabia, Nieke, Giulia and Helena to make an experience of being shot at (when entering the room), using webcam to trigger sounds, then in the middle peacefulness using images which where triggered and get of the screen again, a last row in the back having silhouets (being stalked) leading up to a packman image...

Of course we have put the webcam out of the stage with:
video.x = -3000;

For the triggering and letting disappear the images we needed an extra timer in the webcam activity example:

import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.utils.Timer;

var minuteTimer:Timer = new Timer(1000,1);

minuteTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE, onTimerComplete);

function onTimerComplete(event:TimerEvent):void
{
winkelWagenMovieClip1.removeChildAt(0);
}
//minuteTimer.stop(); //these last lines to be added in the webcamActivityHandler
// minuteTimer.start();

and here you can find this example Flash CS4:
http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/flash-fun.zip

If you have Flash CS3 just put the textfile of this text in a new flash movie, save in a folder and create in this same folder the folders sounds and the folder images. In these last folders you can put your sonds (.mp3 format) and images. Change the names of these sounds and images in the script...
http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/webcamActivity_CS3script.txt

flash movie and folders structure

Using a webcam

Today we will be fooling around with webcam and microphone.

First of all we can load a webcam on the screen (or stage). This is done in a function.

The webcam can trigger loading of images and playing of sounds etc, so can the microphone.

The structure of the script is not too difficult: you add an object (there is the box again), this object is a webcam for tonight. Then you add an eventlistener. And the eventlisteners triggers a function when the event happens.

So we have:

• webcam
• eventlistener
• function on event

This is the same as:

• keyboard - eventlistener - function on event
• mouse - eventlistener - function on event

In the function you can put what you want, it can be loading an image, playing a sound...starting a movie......

The making of the webcam is also a function. This is like the functions of loading an image or streaming a sound. In principle you can copy paste these functions and use them like black boxes.

The working examples can be found here:
http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/flash-fun.zip


Some funny examples from former classes:
http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/DanutasSnorrenShow/webcam.html
Made by Danuta, in her movie your mustache is changed when moving around!

Security setting
Flash is played from website on your computer. So flash movies are not supposed to be able to get data from your computer. Nor are flash movies supposed to activate your webcam without your consent. So every time you use the webcam you have to give permission to do this.

So there is a possibility that when you start the movie with the webcam it wont play immediately.
If nothing is playing or the mic does not respond, first verify if the computer has a mic or webcam, and then try clicking right in the flash window and look at the settings.

More can be done with the webcam than you think: Augmented Reality Flash, or Multitouch Flash is done also with this simple webcam.

Remark: close scrutiny showed that the activity handler is always triggering two times before tting into the normal waiting for a trigger mode. So to do it well,

used:

* webcam activity: eventlistener
* microphone activity: eventlistener

Some keyboard firework

For e-paper we prepared this file:

keyboard Input e-paper prep.zip

in it you find several examples using a bit of turbo scripting:

1. keyboard input examples + netstreamvideo.fla
2. keyboard input start stop resume one button video.fla
3. keyboard input start stop resume one button multiple video.fla
4. keyboard input image shower.fla

1 is the example movie we saw earlier
2 is the same but start play pause resume in one keystroke, alternating, hitting 1
3 is the same all in one key, but it shows 6 video's played together after hitting 1,2,3,4,5,6
4 shows moving images, coming from a point, this is a bit advanced using a class script for the moving image, but still usable, and fun!

In 4 first try 1 then 2, and .... 3 , ok 4 to stop this avalanche!

repeat loop and timer

We learnt something about order and chaos in the last blog.

But we still got a static image. Flash loading the banana's and that was it.

Now we introduce a timer and get the machine alive!

A timer in Flash scripting is a function which can send "events" at a certain time interval. This event is caught by an eventlistener, just like the events from the keyboard and the mouse.

Here is the download, with the example:
http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/orderANDchaos.zip

The timer has to be declared:

var clickTimer:Timer = new Timer(50); //50 is the milliseconds between the ticks
clickTimer.addEventListener("timer", timerHandler2);

and you have to start it ticking:

clickTimer.start();

you can also stop it:

clickTimer.stop();

then like the keyboard or the mouse, you have to prepare a function catching the events:

function timerHandler2 (event:TimerEvent ) {

readSound("click.mp3");}

Now this plays the tick sound every 50 milliseconds, which is a lot!

Try varying the interval....

In the example images are loaded at the tick of the timer.

The images can come in at an unexpected order because the images are loaded from outside. To get a strict order in arrangement from back to front you need to put the images in movieClips, the boxes you already encountered in earlier examples.

Order and chaos: introducing random

The first lessons were really hard work, getting used to the terminology, all the windows, the scripting language...

This time we study the order of the world and the chaos of art. We will try to find a solution in between.

Start with your own background (big) and have a small image with a transparent background (.png) ready.

Discover the possibility of the so called “for-loop” for making order in the two direction: horizontal and vertical:

in a loop we can repeat things:
see the download: in the first movie we load one banana:
loadImage("banana.png", 100, 100);

in the second movie we load three banana's:
loadImage("banana.png", 100, 100);
loadImage("banana.png", 130, 100);
loadImage("banana.png", 160, 100);

but what about 25? Do we have to type all 25 banana's?

No!

We can do this more effecient:
we use a counter, just a variable counting from 0 to 25!
and we use this counter also to change the coordinates, in this case the x: 30 + counter*40
for (var counter = 0 ; counter < counter ="counter" j =" 1" j =" j" i =" 1" i =" i" style="text-align: center;">

Now we introduce a bit of disorder, using a random function:

for (var j = 1 ; j < j =" j" i =" 1" i =" i" style="text-align: center;">

We used the Math.random() to get a random number between 0 and 1 and have to multiply this to get between say 0 and 25 by 25...

We get this image....

We get a mixture of order and chaos, and we can send the screenshots to Boijmans.

Follow the sequence of order and chaos in these free flash movies, made especially for YOU!

http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/flash-orderAndChaos.zip

try making a function which can read another image, so you can alternate the order of two images! (We did that in class )

try varying the scale of the image, to get bigger and smaller images (We did that in class!)

So here are some static results: when you see it happen on screen, or when you repeat the key stroke on your keyboard every time a new unexpected configuration is made by your flash movie.

this is a random grocery shop from Rabia

this is criticizing commercial religions from Nieke

this is font fun from Giulia

Updated example keyboard input + Video streaming

The former example movie was not too complicated, but it didn't have a few possibilities which are needed for playing a video. We could load and play and replay the video in the FLVideoPlayback, but not really resume it.

To solve this problem we need a few extra "boxes", containers around the data. This is like the MovieClip around in image, or the Soundchannel around a sound.

First of all the new example: keyboard Input + Netstream Video

There are several examples of playing with images, sounds and video in this folder
we start with the keyboard input examples + netstreamvideo.fla

The first keys are the usual:

• 1 for a sound
• 2 for a stop sound
• 3 for a image
• 4 for a second image

Then we get to the playing of the video: (this part is new, but you practiced already this kind of scripting)

• 5 playing the first video
• 6 pausing the video
• 7 resuming the video
• 8 repositioning and rescaling the video

Then we have two keys left for the second video (the same for making the download zip smaller)

• 9 load and play second video
• 0 pause/resume second video

What about are the boxes? First we use a box called Netstream, which can be paused and resumed.
Then to get more than one video easily we made a special box called a class, starting from the examples from the FLASH Help, section NetStream.
This class must be included in the folder with the Flash movie. For the rest you can leave this alone. It has been imported at the top of the script:

import NetConnectionVideoClass;

In the script you can read what functions can be called, the name indicate what these functions are for.

To add a third video you have to do two things:
define the box:
var myVideoStream3:NetConnectionVideoClass=new NetConnectionVideoClass("MOV00948.flv");
where MOV00948.flv is the name (you can change, don't forget to put this new video also in the folder of the flash movie.)
and then copy and paste the play and resume parts, changing the name of course to myVideoStream3 instead of myVideoStream1 or myVideoStream2.

The other examples become more complex:
keyboard input start stop resume one button multiple video.fla starts pauses resumes a looping video on one button ( key 0)

If you want to use more than one video there is:
keyboard input start stop resume one button multiple video.fla
This movie has an array of video's, with positions etc, that play, pause, resume on one button.
For the sake of not going too much OO i have used the array and the playPauseResumeVideo function. Of course when more advanced you should make a nice new class.

(Yes the NetConnectionVideoClass.as is already a class....but one that can "just be used" )

Flash Scripting Primer, arrow keys and video on keys, mouse events

Arrow Keys:

Last time we saw the images appear on keyboard input.
Some keys are very special like the arrows, and we have to get hitting the arrows in another way than the normal keys:

normal keys were tracked like this:
if (String.fromCharCode( event.charCode) == "5")
{
myMovieClip1.x = myMovieClip1.x - 50;
}

but with the arrows we have to do it like this:
if (event.keyCode == 38 )//up
{
myMovieClip1.y = myMovieClip1.y - 50;
}

that is because the characters and letters are having a charCode (ASCII code) but the arrows don't represent "normal" characters. The other keys are having keyCode too, of course, but "charCode" is more like "character".

Then using the arrow codes: keyCode = 37 or 38 or 39 or 40 you can steer an image around on the Stage.

An example with only images:

http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/e-paper-images.zip




1,2,3,4 are background images,
5 is a text png,
6 is a duck, 6 is special, if you touch it again the duck will be different, about 5 images are placed in a sequence
7,8,9 are images, and the last image , key 9 always come on top.

The video (using FLVPlayback)
We can start playing a video like loading an image or playing a sound.
The video is streamed, we have to indivate the path, where to find the video:
var videoPath:String = "MOV00948.flv" when the video is in the same folder as the flash movie, or var videoPath:String = "videoFolder/MOV00948.flv", as an example when the video is in the folder called "videoFolder".

Also the video will play only when it is in the special format .flv, you can change the format in the Media Encoder or Video Encoder (CS3 or CS4).

For this way of playing the video we use a "component" of Flash. The components can be found under Menu: Window: COmponents or CMD 7 (MAC) or CTRL 7 (Windows).
Then we drag the FLVPlayback into the library ( CMD L for MAC, CTRL L for Windows). That is all, import fl.video.VideoPlayer; will be recognized.

We can also stop a video, and we can put a filter on a video. All these actions are practiced with the keyboard input.

http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/FlashStarter3.zip
FlashStarter2-ImageSound_onArrows.fla is the flash example with arrows
keyboard input and video.fla shows the possibilities of the video

a fine resource of video material is youtube. Youtube movies have the right format for flash: .flv
you can download youtube movies with this program: ytd
http://download.cnet.com/YouTube-Downloader/3000-2071_4-192611.html

The mouse input
Handling the mouse also creates events like the keys.
We can attach reactions like the ones we practiced with the keys also to the mouse.
Again we use an eventlistener:

stage.addEventListener (.... )
also we have to add a function which defines what to do with the events triggered:
stage.addEventListener (...., whatToDoWithTriggerFunction)
the whatToDoWithTriggerFunction will have to be defined.

Here are several eventlisteners for the mouse (different kind of triggers, clicking moving):

• addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickHandler);
• addEventListener(MouseEvent.DOUBLE_CLICK, doubleClickHandler);
• addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler);
• addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, mouseOutHandler);
• addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, mouseOverHandler);
• addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, mouseUpHandler);

Then in the function we can track different kind of properties:
The mouse is more versatile than a key! For example the mouse point has x and y coordinates.

We can do something with these coordinates like this:

function startDraw ( event:MouseEvent): void
{
var posX : Number = event.stageX;
var posY : Number = event.stageY;
}

So with the mouse we can make a simple drawing flash movie:

http://www.contrechoc.com/flash/SimpleDraw.zip

Ok enough for today, we have to practice using this information, modify the movies, make