This is the third segment in a series of articles about my experiences with various tools used for using Flash to encode and control audio and video in online situations.

Part 3, Controlling MP3s with Wimpy Audio Controls

In the second segment I looked briefly at Flix Pro from Wildform. Flix Pro is used to encode video and then package it in easy to use .swf files. It even includes about 135 player designs that give you enough choice so you can nicely avoid having to work with Flash MX to create unique looking players. At least to this point, Flix seems like a pretty good solution for putting video online. But then there is the audio issue.

This was the second problem I had. I wanted to find a simple solution for embedding flash-based audio controls in web pages. As I mentioned above, I had already been using Camtasia Producer to create "talking articles", but these were not straight-ahead audio presentations. I was just looking for some simple control buttons that would turn audio on and off. Of course I had seen these buttons many times on various websites, and had been subjected to the online marketing pitch to "add audio to your site" more than once.

But previous searches had only turned up things I did not want. I had found either Flash MX tutorials outlining how to program buttons to control audio in 50 easy steps (no thanks), or complete "solutions" that involved using someone else to host the audio files. Do I really need that? Not.

Actually Flix Pro has an "audio-only" solution, but the buttons are just too basic for my taste. All I really wanted was a set of nice looking buttons that used "three-easy-steps" programming.

The first product I investigated was MP3 Soundstream. At first this seemed to offer exactly what I was after. Lots of nice looking button combinations, and an easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks interface. But after trying out the demonstration version I decided I didn't like it's one-size-fits-all audio conversion -- everything gets converted to 56k audio. I decided to look a bit further (although I expect to use MP3 Soundstream in the future).

That's when I hit upon "Wimpy". You can see two versions of Wimpy controllers it in action on this page I immediately liked two things about Wimpy. First, the Wimpy approach is as simple as it gets (and fortunately, is nice looking), and second, it doesn't mess with your audio files. You just point a Wimpy controller at your mp3s, and it turns it plays them.

The simplest version is the Wimpy button. Point it at an MP3 on your server, and the Wimpy button will turn it on or off.

I especially liked how this principle is applied to The Wimpy Player. You put a bunch of audio files in a folder on your web server, create a play list where you choose which ones you want and in what order, load the play list into the Wimpy Player, and you're in the "radio" business.

Of course, like all programs of this sort, there is quite a bit of experimentation involved to see how the various features work. This is especially the case with the Wimpy Player. For instance, as I mention above, if you want to line up a series of audio segments -- as I have in the demo on this page -- and have them play in sequence, you can create a play list. You can tweak the descriptions of your tracks, and these descriptions will then show up in the little display panel in the player.  This creates an editable .xml file which is then used to control the player.

So say you want to edit your play list -- add a new track in the middle, take something out, or change a description. It appears that you can't load the old play list into the play list utility and make changes. You have to start over again from scratch. This is quite a nuisance. Of course the Wimpy people say you can edit the .xml control file with a text editor. But who wants to do that. I'm reasonably good at these things, and I couldn't quite get it to work properly. I'm sure after a bit of trial and error I'd get it. But who really needs that?

I also couldn't get the graphic version of the player to work. This is the one that loads a thumbnail -- a little album cover image, for instance -- in a little window built into the player. I did my best to follow the instructions, but it simply wouldn't work.

I assume these are issues that will be worked out in future upgrades. I hope so, because the "pros" far outweigh the "cons" as far as Wimpy is concerned.

I hope to report on my further successes with these tools in the very near future. I will also report on MP3 Soundstream just as soon as I get a chance to try it out.

-- Rick Hendershot
www.videoinabox.com