Flash Coder

Though I’m a Flash developer, I’m sure this is as useful to all web developers. On a technical basis, I have, use and need to carry, a DSLR, a DV video camera, a 17 inch MacBook Pro, an iPod, a Sony Ericsson P990i and numerous associated periferals (Wacom tablet, power supplies, external hard drives, spare batteries, remote controls, etc). I also need to carry consumables and supplies such as blank and burned DVDs, DV tapes, pens, pencils, markers, lined and drawing pads. Then there is the ever changing but essential reading material: the latest technical manuals of the moment or the alpha software release notes. I have a completely mobile, geographically independent micro-office. Read the rest of this entry »

If, like me, you use video quite a bit in your projects, and I don’t just mean FLVs, (perhaps you use media directly, passing it to the devices native codecs or perhaps you need original codec footage to transcode to FLV) then a really useful resource would be an online library of all video and audio codecs with example files for each. This would allow you not only to test out the codecs and your code but also save you a LOT of time trying to resource media files in the right format or trying to encode or transcode existing ones for testing. It would also give you insight to other available codecs you’d never heard of and it might summarise their strengths, uses and weakneses, thus allowing you to advise your clients better on their codec choices.

Ahhhh, that would be nice. Well, Wikipedia have just such a section. It also has a section for audio codecs (in the left hand menu). So if you do any broadcast, media agency, Flash Media Server or IPTV work, this is a definate Bookmarker. In fairness, there probably are a few codecs missing, but it’s extremely unlikely they’ll be codecs any of us have ever heard about or will use. A big thank you to Richard Leggett for pointing me (and all the attendees of the LFPUG) to this excellent resource on Thursday night. I WILL be using this a lot.