Inspired as I am by Rob Brooks-Bilson’s posts, I’m putting this out there:
I want a cfvideo tag for Centaur that is akin to the cfimage tag in terms of usage and abilities. I want to be able to crop, cut, manipulate, and codec video. I want to be able to easily make Flash Video content from our content.
I posit that video isn’t what’s next for web developers, it is what is.
I wanted to get that in before I hear what anything about the next version of ColdFusion.
tpryan.blog 
How about making IP phone calls out of ColdFusion. That would be cool.
OnError:
Warning. An error has occurred.
Better yet an avatar on screen that talks
Hello, welcome to my ColdFusion blog
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…Well I failed in posting demo code, one more try…
How about making IP phone calls out of ColdFusion. That would be cool.
OnError:
<cfphonecall callid=”ERROR ERROR” voicesynth=”benforta” call=”#adminMobile#”>
Warning. An error has occurred.
</cfphonecall>
Better yet an avatar on screen that talks
<cfavatar model=”benforta” creepyeyesfollowcursor=”yes”>
Hello, welcome to my ColdFusion blog
</cfavatar>
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Some CFers say that this kind of enhancements turn ColdFusion into a toy. I disagree, ColdFusion is great because of all ‘complicated-things-made-easy’ and video manipulation is no exception.
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Just to give a different perspective, video manipulation, encoding, etc. is SO not ColdFusion’s job. If they put it in CF 9 I am going to have serious doubts about the decision-making process at Adobe. Just because they did it with images (which as an aside, I think does make sense) doesn’t mean they should do it with video.
Do people understand what a processor-intensive operation video encoding is, not to mention all the extra junk that will be in CF to handle this even if 99% of CF users never use it?
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While it would be cool, I think I have to agree with Matt, it’s not really ColdFusion’s place to be doing video editing.
That said, there are other solutions to getting video done in such a way. Using something like SoThinkMedia’s Flash Video Encoder with cfexecute and some creative use of custom tags may give you what you are looking for.
Just a thought
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I hear what both @jason and @matt are saying. However, I have to disagree, ColdFusion’s job to me has always been make hard things easy. Working with user developed video on the web isn’t easy for the average developer yet. Adobe can make it so.
As for processor and space issues. I agree that it is daunting, but we keep seeing power and space increase every year. It takes multiple years to develop a CF version. By the time cf9 comes out, the hardware will be a factor more ready to deal with these issues.
As opposed to cfimage, I would like to see Coldfusion ahead of customer demand instead of behind it. This demand is coming, it would be nice to see ColdFusion ready to handle it.
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I’d counter by asking if it’s a web developer’s job to deal with video? Moreover, is it a web application server’s job to deal with video? In both cases I’d say no. Furthermore, there are already PLENTY of products that DO make dealing with video easy. I suspect that people asking for cfvideo haven’t looked into what some of the enterprise-level video encoders and video servers can do. “But it’s not ColdFusion!” people will counter, but I digress …
I’m always VERY wary when people say things like “Don’t worry about it–the hardware will be so powerful it won’t matter!” Faster hardware is not an answer to bloatware, which is what adding video processing capabilities will turn ColdFusion into.
Adobe has solutions to do everything with video you could possibly imagine, and yes, on the server side and programmatically, just not with ColdFusion. In my opinion it should stay that way. Throwing crap like this in to impress my boss and get him to buy more CF licenses is not the way to make a good product.
I suppose this gets into the question of what ColdFusion is, and what Adobe wants it to be in the future. If they’re going to indiscriminately say “yes” to every idea they hear, we’re in for very rough times ahead.
Hey, I know, in addition to cfvideo let’s throw ActionScript 3 support in there while we’re at it! It’ll be a big ol’ party! My server processors, RAM, and disk space as well as the performance of applications will suffer for it, but the eye candy will impress my boss! 🙂
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Actually, Matt, I’m a big user of Premiere and I have done a very little bit with Flash Media Server. I am aware of Adobe’s other tools.
I’m not saying that the hardware will definitely be ready to handle it. I’m saying that people are definitely going to want their web apps to handle video.
So is is a web developer/server’s job to deal with video. I would say increasing yes. The success of YouTube is changing user’s expectation of what can happen on the web. You might not see it as your job, but users are increasingly going to think it is.
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@Matt: Adobe got where it is in the marketplace by anticipating future demands–just like Terrence said.
Adobe is not here for performance, or to avoid bloatware, or any of that (just check out the size of a CF8 installation if you have doubts).
ColdFusion is here to make things EASY, and if it helps make online video editing EASIER, then what is the problem?
I’m all for it–there were people who thought PDF manipulation was a bad idea a few years back, but now it’s really the best thing CF has going for it!
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Well, I could go back and forth with people on this all day, so I’ll bow out by saying that it concerns me, with all the stuff they could be doing to make CF better, that they’re going to spend engineering time (and likely a lot of it) rolling something into CF that just doesn’t need to be there. I’m sure Adobe is thinking “one product to rule them all” but where does it end? CF’s going to collapse under its own weight if they keep going in this direction.
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Just to throw another idea out there (yeah, I know I said I’d shut up), how about cfmusic? Music’s pretty important on the web–why shouldn’t CF be able to handle music encoding/re-encoding, auto-generating snippets, making ring tones, and doing remixes? I know–combine cfmusic and cfvideo into a cfvideosoundtrack tag to provide a fullly integrated solution!
And if anyone says “great idea!” I may lose my mind. 🙂
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I think you are onto something Matt 🙂
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Well, cfvideo would require some cfaudio. You would have to be able to cut and manipulate the accompanying sound.
I think it is Reductio Ad Absurdum to go as far as ring tones as remixes.
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So we’re talking cfaudio too. FANtastic. Can hardly wait.
I guess I just think about this stuff completely differently than the people who want this because cutting and manipulating SOUND now too–in ColdFusion?!?!?–that’s Reductio Ad Absurdum to me.
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This would be a great idea. I have seen Railo has implemented cfvideo but I have not had a chance to check it out yet.
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Next release (available at June) of Railo will indroduce 3 new Tags:
– cfvideo
– cfvideoplayer
– cfvideoplayerparam
cfvideo allows to convert, concat videos, get info about the video and cut out images. all in various formats.
cfvideoplayer/cfvideoplayerparam will allows playing flash and mp4 (flash 9 required) videos in a online player, you can arrange video group, playlists …
take a first view of the player and some attribute infos of the tags at http://preview.railo.ch/video/
greetings Michael
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I just stumbled upon this blog post and i wanted to throw in my two cents.
I’m not exactly sure how I feel about a cfvideo tag. I know I would like a Coldfusion tag that I could just type in something like this:
All the tag would do is display my .swf video or .flv video file in a Flash compatible skinned player.
I would also love a tag, one that would automatically correct the problem in IE and how it displays flash. All you would need to do is type in and that would write all of the code needed to display a .swf file in any browser on the internet. It would auto-correct the crappy IE problem.
I’m not sure how you would use CF to manipulate video. I guess I have always seen Flash Pro and Premiere the tools to do that with from Adobe.
I’d love to see CF become free, btw. I think the number of users would go up and the community would grow. If anything a free license to run on a server for non-commerical endeavors. I want this from Adobe, not Dragon.
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If you can now embed videos in PDF with InDesign and edit video in Photoshop I gotta believe Adobe is going to put some video capabilities into CF.
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But would they though? Would they add audio/video manipulation into CF? I don’t think so. They already have Flash video server, which has a pretty interesting (and lucrative for them) licensing model, the last time I checked. Would they water down their own market by putting in a low level equivalent? And it would have to be low level, very low, because it does chew up a ton of processor to buffer and encode video. Would it be cool? A valid ‘next step’? Sure it would. But I think it would be better to provide a better licensing model on FMS, and nice hooks from CF, with tunnels to ‘push’ the encoding request to another machine hosting the FMS.
Can I see them doing it? Well, PDF generation chews up major processor power now, so anything can happen, I guess.
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