Unfortunately, he’s correct. I’ve run into this myself, once CS3 came out. It did work in the Flash 9 Bèta, but it is broken in the release version. The problem lies in these lines:

my_video._width = my_cam.width;
my_video._height = my_cam.height;

Where this also adjusted the what is now Video.videoWith and Video.videoHeight properties, it is now impossible to change those after the creation of your instance of the Video object. No need to worry, though, because if you’d just supply the size you want when creating the instance, everything works fine. Here’s the whole working thing:

var my_cam:Camera = Camera.getCamera();
my_cam.setMode(640,480,10);

var my_video:Video = new Video(my_cam.width, my_cam.height);
my_video.attachCamera(my_cam);
addChild(my_video);

var bmd_video:BitmapData = new BitmapData(my_cam.width,my_cam.height);
var bm:Bitmap = new Bitmap(bmd_video);
bm.x = my_cam.width;
bm.y = 0;
addChild(bm);

var updateInterval:uint = setInterval(update,100);

function update() {
	bmd_video.draw(my_video);
}

Of course, putting everything in nice class files would be better, but I find timeline code easier for these simple demonstrations. This doesn’t require you to create and save all the files, it’s just paste and run. But if you prefer that, you can use this:

package
{
	import flash.display.Bitmap;
	import flash.display.BitmapData;
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
	import flash.display.StageAlign;
	import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
	import flash.events.Event;
	import flash.events.TimerEvent;
	import flash.media.Camera;
	import flash.media.Video;
	import flash.utils.Timer;

	[SWF(width="1280", height="480", frameRate="10", backgroundColor="#FFFFFF")]
	public class WebcamHiRes extends MovieClip
	{
		private var _camera:Camera;
		private var _video:Video;
		private var _bmd:BitmapData;
		private var _bm:Bitmap;

		private var _updateTimer:Timer;

		public function WebcamHiRes():void
		{
			stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
			stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

			_camera = Camera.getCamera();
			_camera.setMode(640, 480, 10);

			_video = new Video(_camera.width, _camera.height);
			_video.attachCamera(_camera);
			addChild(_video);

			_bmd = new BitmapData(_camera.width, _camera.height);
			_bm = new Bitmap(_bmd);
			_bm.x = _camera.width;
			addChild(_bm);

			_updateTimer = new Timer(100);
			_updateTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, update);
			_updateTimer.start();
		}

		private function update(e:Event = null):void
		{
			_bmd.draw(_video);
		}
	}
}

If you are interested, you can read it all on niels.keetlaer.net/emma.

(via).

In 1982, William Gibson already invented a term to describe the online world in his story Burning Chrome. As you might now, the name he gave it was cyberspace. Well, his online world isn’t what it is now, but the term is widely used to describe ‘the internet’ in its widest meanings.

As I wanted to make a distinction between cyberspace and the ‘real world’ without implying cyberspace to be unreal, I coined a new term: meatspace. As it appears, I’m not the only one coming up with such a plastic description, given that there’s already a Wikipedia article about it which I certainly didn’t write myself.

It might feel a bit fleshy, but you’ll get over it.

Eyedentity is a project of a few fellow students, in cooperation with the TV Show Holland Doc. Unfortunately for non-Dutch-speaking people, it’s all in Dutch… But here’s what this is all about.

Eyedentity is an experiment about survival in the virtual world. After several rounds of casting, a participant has been chosen to be locked up in a room with only a computer hooked up to the internet to communicate with the outside world - even phonecalls are out of the question. Jennifer, that’s her, must even order her own food from the ‘net. Parcels will be deliverd to the researchers, who will then hand them over to Jennifer, as to limit physical contact with the outside world as much as possible. Also, she can be followed with a webcam 24/7 from the project webpage. How will she survive this modernist trail?

I’m really curious as to how much damage this abstinence from the outside world (even during ‘Sinterklaas’ and Christmas!) will do to her (not to worry, there’s a shrink on stand-by). Even though I am more of a ‘net person than most, after a few days of no (physical) contact I get rather bored, irritated and generally craving for human contact. And then I’m not even speaking of having a webcam following me all day…

Update: As you might have gathered (I am a little late in reporting), the whole thing was a fake. The creators wanted to create an experience about online privacy, about what it means. According to them, it comes down to:

You are what you pretend to be

I don’t really know about outsiders, but being in on this project (I helped out with a bit of the programming) was quite an experience as well. There were quite a few dubious happenings (for example: there were obviously repeating clips, or a large (plastic) gull flying through the room), and still people kept believing. For example, she (or, at any rate, the person behind the chat) was asked if she noticed the gull flying trough the room. She could deny it, and people believed her instead of their own eyes.

Wonderful.

You can also head straight to the test page.

I have been rather busy lately (and been on vacation for a few weeks) so updating my weblog didn’t go as planned. Sorry for that…

As I have told, I have been working on the website for ‘The Selfish Gene‘. It has worked out very well and I am very pleased with the result - as is Lola, who commisioned the project. All the lamps you can see on the website are dynamically generated, based on the genes Lola enters in the database. We did have a few headaches concerning the mathematics though.

Unfortunately, I still cannot tell you much about the project I was enrolled in last time. However, we’ve had a few very promising meetings and it is most likely that two of our three concepts will be implemented in the real world outside our school. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve just converted all my old post to Wordpress, but some links have vanished in this copy/paste-galore. I will soon check them all. Now, let’s make that dinner, or it’s going to be the 3rth time this week I skip that…

Also I’ve met a beginning artist who’se working on her final assessment in school. She’s on a very cool project. In short, she’s designed a series of lamps. Each lamp is described by a set of ‘genes’. Clients who want to order a lamp are to pick their two favorite lamps of the latest generation and the genes of those lamp will the determine the shape of their lamp. The next two weeks, I will be working on her website. Man, it’s gonna be cool, I tell you that.

As if that isn’t enough, the next two weeks I’ll also be following an ‘Advanced Flash’ course in school. Although I doubt I will learn much, there’s a prize of €750 for the best production so I’m doing my very best to win ;).

Last, but not least, I’ve been toying with the socket-class in Flash CS3. It’s really a breeze to work with, were it not for the Flash Security Model. In less than one hour I whipped together a simple chatroom, including a local server (not in Flash). It’s not really worth showing, but it’s been a good exercise.

Well… back to housecleaning now - but first a lunch!