Hi Chris,<br><br>Thanks for the reply. Here's some background on myself. I have been doing professional web design for about ten years now. I've worked heavily on both sides of the spectrum, art and programming. I started working with Flash in 2000 as animator/designer and as the technology has evolved gotten more heavily involved in the programming aspect of it. Needless to say, when it comes to Flash i've pretty much seen it all and had a small part in a lot of the innovation over the last several years.
<br><br>So for this project I'll get right to the point for a few things.<br><br>First, while I agree with you its important to keep this as open source as possible there is a clear distinction that needs to be made between the Flash IDE and Flex. Flex is a compiler and Flash is a design environment. Typically when building any swf application artwork is created and placed within the Flash IDE and then Flex is used to tie it all together. This is made seamless by the use of shared libraries and components within the ActionScript langauge. What I will suggest in this regard is to develop a Flash player that's art is controlled via template which can be changed at runtime. This is not too difficult to pull off but due to the nature of swf will require the artwork to still be produced in Flash with the underlying code all developed externally and can even be compiled externally (via Flex). Another thing that can be noted is that Flex and Flash have different sets of components available. Flash users typically have more robust components available to them while Flex have more basic components. For instance, with Flash 8 you get components for building FLV players that allow you to merely drag and drop the components into your file and you have a player. For Flex, the components must be built from scratch. So this should also be considered.
<br><br>To address the three parts of the project you listed:<br><br>1. The ActionScript Sound class only supports mp3. Therefore must be converted to this format in order to play through swf.<br><br>2/3. In Flash, an FLV player is an FLV player. The difference between a live stream and a pre-existing file is simply a parameter you would send the player. Parameters can be passed in to swf via HTML or URL reference so you can use the same swf file to drive the two sections.
<br><br>Getting the video into FLV format I think will be an issue though. All options that I presently know of for converting video are proprietary, especially when you're talking about a video streaming server. <br>