In this beginner to intermediate tutorial I’m going to show you how to play HD video without the inevitable blurring that occurs when the video is enlarged.

The reason for this is that I’m getting a bit tired of visiting YouTube or other sites that present HD video with a full screen option only to discover, when I click the Full Screen button, that I suddenly need the prescription for my glasses changed.

The issue is not the video but how the Flash Player handles the process of going full screen. Let’s find out how to do things properly..

Continue Reading

The rise of Flash Video and Web 2.0 over the past few years has also sparked an increase in the use of video as a communication tool. Along with this increased awareness there has also been a corresponding increase in the use of web cams that are either hard wired into the computer or sold as separate add ons.

In this tutorial I am going to show you, firstly, how to feed a web cam signal into Flash and, secondly, how to get in touch with your inner spy and use your web cam to detect intruders.

Continue Reading

Almost all PC user interfaces are designed around the notion of moving a cursor and clicking on objects. Buttons, menus, combo boxes, lists and every other standard UI control work in this way. The mouse is used to position the cursor, and the position of the cursor is used to perform an action.

It’s a design paradigm that has worked well, but lately new technologies like touch screens and motion sensors (think the Wii) have challenged the notion of using a mouse, or even having a cursor on the screen at all..

Continue Reading

Following my tutorials on PureMVC and the YouTube Player API I thought it would be a good idea to show you how to use the YouTube GData API for searching for and playing videos. So I’ve created a little tutorial that combines your new PureMVC and YouTube Player skills into a nice and simple search and play gadget.

Continue Reading

Though more and more of us are developing with AS3, certain technologies remain in AS2. This forces us to find fast, simple ways to use these technologies within our projects. One such technology is YouTube.

The current YouTube player is still in AS2 and until it’s updated to AS3, we have to create a wrapper to allow us to load videos into our projects. Remember, stealing the FLV feed is against YouTube’s terms and conditions, so let’s do it the right way using the chromed or chromeless player.

Continue Reading