rocking the FLVs with the Cimi theme

daveperry

Hi support community, it's Dave.

So far, I love zenphoto, and I love the Cimi theme. I've hit one very serious speed bump, though - I can't get my FLV files to play with any combination of settings. I've put "AddHandler video/x-flv .flv" statements into my htaccess files, I've added the FLV as a MIME type in my BlueHost cPanel, I've got the content-video and flvplayer plug-ins enabled in zenphoto, I've pot PNG thumbnails with the same name as the FLV files, the FLV files are properly encoded as H.264 (via MediaCoder), et cetera ad nauseum.

(homepage - www.daveperryarts.com )
(gallery - www.daveperryarts.com/zenphoto/ )
(album - www.daveperryarts.com/zenphoto/animations/ )

Bottom line: I can click on the thumbnail in my "Animations" album, and the image.php page loads like it does with any other image, but nothing at all loads in the image/video container.

Other info that may help:

I altered the Cimi theme php pages (index, image, album) to match the navigation and aesthetic of the rest of my site - hasn't had any noticable side effects.

I've checked the album and animation on Windows XP/IE7 and Windows Vista/IE7 - same problem on both.

Because the zenphoto directory isn't the root of my website, there are two htaccess files in effect - I've added the AddHandler command to both of them

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions - the sooner I get this thing up and running, the sooner I can find a job that actually pays me like I'm more than a trained monkey!

-Dave

acrylian

The cimi theme is not an supported theme. Please try if it works with one of the standard themes and with a pure Zenphoto install. Also note that sometimes the flash players are a little picky about video codecs used as flv is a container format not a codec itself.

daveperry

Stubborn as I am, I found a stable workaround. Acrylian's advice is good, but I'm describing the jury-rig here, in case anyone else has this trouble (and is similarly attached to the cimi theme).

THE CULPRIT
In cimi's image.php file, the function it calls to grab the image is printDefaultSizedImageAlt() - the standard themes call the function printDefaultSizedImage(). The cimi Alt function (in theme-functions.php) seems to be in place to make the nifty fade-in effect work. This mucks up any movie file, as the Alt function specifically calls an image.

THE SOLUTION
I added an if-else statement in cimi's image.php, inside the div with the id "image". The idea, of course, is to call the default function if the file is an FLV, and call the Alt function if it's anything else.

where it once read:
`<?php printDefaultSizedImageAlt(getImageTitle()) ?>`

it now reads:
`<?php if (strrchr(getFullImageURL(), ".flv") == ".flv")<br />
printDefaultSizedImage(getImageTitle());

else printDefaultSizedImageAlt(getImageTitle()); ?>`

There are probably cleaner or more efficient ways to do this (and if anyone would like to suggest such a method, I'll very happily make my code a little neater), but in the meantime.. I'm going to call this one a win.

Keep fighting the good fight, zenphoto support community

-Dave

acrylian

I didn't know that the cimi theme has its own image functions. That explains it. This an quite old theme. I think you probably don't need the if/else construct as the printDefaultSizeImage() function actually handles all (except anything is special about the replacement function which I don't know.)