How to count number of lines in a TextField

I was facing this dilema to correct a game were in the textfields the text can have 1, 2 or 3 lines. Depending on the number of lines I wanted to center the text vertically so that when it had only 1 line, it would append a new line "\n" before the text.

This only applies to normal dynamic textfields, not TFL. These have their own methods to center text both horizontally and vertically... much easier.

There's a property called numLines, but this only states that the chosen TextField will have an x number of lines that you specify, you can't use it to return the number of text lines that you see.

So you have to make another type of calculation, and the textfield must be multiline.

var myHeight:Number = myText.height; //store the height of the textfield

myText.multiline = true; //don't need to do this, if it is in the properties panel
myText.wordWrap = true; //same as above

myText.height = myHeight; // here is the trick, try removing this line
trace("DYNAMIC TEXTFIELD HAVE "+myText.maxScrollV+" LINES");

Cheers

Time lapse for FLVPlayback

This is one of those cases when the Adobe documentation is rare, or doesn't help much.

I had a hard time figuring out how to place a bar that would grow along with the playback of a movie in the FLVPlayback component.

First make a custom MovieClip with a rectangle (it can be another shape, but usually rectangles are best for these) and give it a name: myPlayhead

You must have already the FLVPlayback component on stage, with a given name. I will name it: myFLVplayback

For the script we will need to import a class to do this: VideoEvent. This class has several events you can use to get info from the FLVplayback when playing video (http://www.adobe.com/livedocs/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/fl/video/VideoEvent.html)

import flash.video.VideoEvent;


//The movie doesn't start
myFLVPlayback.stop();


//Rewinds automatically if the video is stopped or it reaches the end.
//By default it's false
myFLVPlayback.autoRewind=true;


//Adds the listener for each time the playhead updates it's position

myFLVPlayback.addEventListener(VideoEvent.PLAYHEAD_UPDATE, videoHandler);


function videoHandler(evt:VideoEvent):void{
var totalSeconds:Number = myFLVPlayback.totalTime;
var elapsedSeconds:Number = myFLVPlayback.playheadTime;

var percent:Number=Math.round((elapsedSeconds/totalSeconds)*100);
        
        //The custom seekBar will change it's size according the the percentage
        //of the played movie
seekBt.progressMc.scaleX=percent;
}


Cheers

Custom controls for the FLVPlayback video component

This time I had to help a friend that needed to play some videos in a fancy interface.

The problem was that he didn't want the buttons that Flash provides for video playback, and wanted some flexibility towards mouse events, i.e., beeing able to hide or show the buttons with custom events or mouse events.

For now I will tell how I changed the controls.

First of all you need to make some custom MovieClips for the buttons. One MovieClip per button.

(this is valid for actionscripting the interface, or placing the components directly on stage)

Place the FLVplayback component in the stage and give it a name: myFlvplayback

Place the buttons where you want on the interface, and give them a name: playBt, pauseBt, stopBt,... and so on.

Now the script. You have to associate the buttons to the video component, stating what each button will do, like this:


myFlvplayback.playButton=playBt;
myFlvplayback.stopButton=stopBt;
myFlvplayback.seekBar=seekBt;
myFlvplayback.pauseButton=pauseBt;

That's it. If you run the movie, you'll see that this is enough to custom controls for this video component.

A further step is to make a custom interface with the all buttons inside a single MovieClip. Then you can make your custom autohide function with some MouseEvents.

Cheers