Recipe 16.11. Stopping Video

Problem

You want to stop a video from playing and downloading.

Solution

Use the close( ) method of the NetStream class.

Discussion

When you want to stop a video from playing back, use the close( ) method of the NetStream object that controls the video. When you use the pause( ) method, the video simply pauses and starts playing again (typically when a UI button is pressed by the user), but even when paused, the FLV data continues to download. If you want to completely stop a video from downloading, use the close( ) method, as follows:

videoStream.close(  );

When you call the close( ) method, Flash Player deletes the FLV data from the player. If you request the video again, it needs to start the download all over again. It is possible, however, that a web browser might cache the FLV, and subsequent requests to the same FLV might retrieve the cached version. In such instances, subsequent requests for the same FLV would be faster to playback. However, if an FLV is cached, it's possible that a user might see a cached version rather than an updated version. To ensure that the user always sees the latest version of the FLV, append a unique query string to the FLV request URL, as shown in the following example:

videoStream.play("video.flv?uniqueIndex=" + (new Date(  )).getTime(  ));

If you don't want a video to be cached for digital rights purposes, you cannot use progressive download video. In such cases, you need to stream the video by using a technology such as Flash Media Server, which is outside of the scope of this book.