I see on the documentation that if you can get access to the .flv, .mp4 or RTMP streams directly, you do not need a site configuration file, what about .f4v?
F4V and F4M are streaming formats that Plex is not capable of playing directly. If that's the only format you have access to, then you will need to use a site config to lock on to the flash player.
f4**m**/f4**f** files are used with Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming. Those type of streams cannot be played by Plex directly.
f4**v** files are similar to flv files:
Source: Flash Video - Wikipedia
OK now I am confused. Is .F4V supported or not? I looked it up and .F4V is considered the newer version of .FLV format used by Flash in Flash Player 9 and later. I read that Adobe is encouraging everyone to update to the new .F4V format, so I would hope either it is supported or it will be supported in the future.
Just not sure how the SWF vs ISO base media file format affects its ability to work with Plex. It is supposed to be an MPEG-4 Video file, similar to FLV but with support for H.264/AAC content, which to me sounds like it would work better with Plex. But will it work at all? Even with the creation of a site configuration file, since it looks like one of the things you have to do as part of the site configuration is manually connect the SWF files? (though I cannot be sure since I am still confused looking at the Dev Center documentation) And any other references I have found seem to say if you are accessing Flash video, you have to specify or connect to the SWF of the video.
As I said, I am still confused about even some of the basics of writing channels, but I did decide I would try to choose a project and just start trying to code since many said this is how they learned channel development. I don’t see the point in trying to change an existing channel’s design, since they work well the way they are. So I decided to find a site with some video I would like to watch and try to make a channel for it. By looking at the embed code option on the site, it appears that there is a direct path to the videos. I even accessed the video directly using the VLC player. It is even using a swf file to embed the player. But the videos are .F4V format. So I need to figure out if the site is worth pursuing further or should I just chunk this site as a project?
Sorry for the confusion. F4V files should work directly without a site config. I was getting them confused with F4M which is an unsupported format.
Is the Framework Documentation still accurate in saying that if you cannot access the video files directly and have to use the swf object info and create a site configuration that it will only work with MAC OS X?
That's not entirely accurate anymore. You will need a site config if you can't access the video file (or RTMP stream), but PMS on Windows has support for webkit (site-config) based plugins for Windows Vista and newer.
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