Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
SoundManager 2: Cool New Flash 9 Features
Category: Flash, JavaScript
, Sound
, Video
Scott Schiller has updated his popular SoundManager 2 library to include new functionality made possible by Flash 9, such as:
* Full-screen MPEG-4 video (HE-AAC/H.264) and audio support
* “MultiShot” play (layered/chorusing effects)
* Waveform/frequency spectrum data
* Peak (L/R channel volume) data
* Audio buffering state/event handling
In addition, SoundManager 2 now includes improved console.log()-style debugging, a troubleshooting/help tool, and the project website sports redesigned documentation, updated API demos, and more examples.
One of those examples is a “360° UI” sound visualization; this is the screenshot at the head of the post. The website features plenty of other demos, including full-screen video playback, etc.
This obviously takes SoundManager to a whole new level and is very exciting stuff.
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Great job, no doubt about that. But…
…When will Webkit (or at least Google Chrome) support HTML5 video and audio tags for the **Ogg Theora** free format? No Flash + no MPEG-4 == no proprietary platforms. This is when I’ll be opening the champagne bottle! :)
Plus… YouTube urging visitors to switch to Google Chrome or Firefox to watch videos without any plugins needed! ;) An effective way to pressure Microsoft to support the open web with its Internet Explorer “browser”.
Someone needs to make some site to pressure IE into delivering a Canvas element. I would really be into using it a lot more if it was anywhere near cross browser…
in the old sound manager it would choke on mp3s coded in 320bitrate (everything below worked). going to test this and post feedback.
It already had most of the features you listed. Old news.
@aw93053: Flash does not get along well with some MP3s encoded at very low or very high bitrates, as they tend to have sample rates Flash doesn’t like. My understanding is playback is either too slow or too fast due to sampling rate being something other than 11, 22 or 44 Khz (see “The Chipmunk Problem“.) 48 khz bitrates on 320 kbps-encoded MP3s for example would be problematic.
@Darkimmortal: Correct, not all features listed above are new with this version – it’s more of a feature summary. The revision history has better details on what’s changed with the latest version.
For those of you interested in a similar jQuery plugin. Check out http://www.happyworm.com/jquery/jplayer/
@Shill I made a pure flash music player last night and I can confirm that flash is the culprit. ;)