AIR 17 Random Crashes. Features broken between releases. Long term bugs unfixed

[john_whiteman]

Hi,

I've used "Flash" in it's various incarnations for over a decade now. Have always been a fan of "Flash" and the web wouldn't be what it is today without it. I've worked with it on many projects in the past and I'm current using it as a Digital Signage application that runs in a browser and on Android devices.

However, after another 3 day session trying to fix an issue in our application I'm getting to the point of giving up on it.

I am trying to do the most simple thing: Have a video loop seamlessly on an Android device. Look at the ridiculous amount of things I've had to do to achieve this:

As far as I know (judging by forum posts) Adobe offers no* solution to seamlessly loop videos. Eg. (Psuedocode): "var video; video.loop = true; video.play(URL)". There is always a 'pause', 'stutter' or 'delay' that prevents this.

Workaround: Seamlessly looping video files in AS3 with Netstream.appendBytes | redannick blog‌. I have to convert my videos to FLV format, download them to the device and then use the AppendByteVideoLoop.

This solution works until... installing AIR 15 where a bug in the NetStream object raises many 'onMetaData' events and kills the AppendByteVideoLoop workaround.

Fast forward to AIR 17 and AppendByteVideoLoop appears to be working again... BUT... now the application crashes randomly and won't even restart after a crash. No information is presented in 'logcat' or anywhere else, it just 'hangs' and won't restart unless I reboot. Other times the app will run for several hours without a problem.

This is just one example of my problems with AIR over the last couple of years. I'm grateful for the new features and hard work of the development team, however it seems some sort of quality control needs to be implemented.

Take a  look at FLV with 'StageVideo' as an example:

1) In this article the Adobe AIR team says "Use StageVideo.  Always." ( Best Practices for High Performing and Efficient Flash Video )

2) However a 'Known issue' in AIR 17 is "[Android] FLV video encoded with H264 is not working with stage video, video is not getting rendered (Bug 3950740)" ( Release Notes | Flash Player® 17 AIR® 17 ‌)

3) AIR 18 Beta Release Notes: http://labsdownload.adobe.com/pub/labs/flashruntimes/shared/air18_flashplayer18_releasenotes.pdf

3a) "Fixed Issue": Application crashes on playing any FLV video using stage video (Bug 3976878)

3b) "Known Issue": FLV video encoded with H264 is not working with stage video, video is not getting rendered whereas working fine on desktop (3950740)

Why is something as important as StageVideo not working? How is a version deemed release ready when these issues exist?

I wish the AIR development team would be given time to 'pause' on adding new features and just spend time fixing some bugs and implementing some stability / consistency into the framework. Perhaps it is possible to make the framework more modular in some way so we can have a working 'core' and enable new features if we need them?

I'm really dreading the thought of having to move our product over to HTML5 this late in the product cycle (app is 5 years old)... but if I add up the hours of dealing with workarounds and bugs it feels like I might have to.

My main reason for posting this was to ask if anybody feels the same way?

[KramSurfer2]

Yes.  I feel you're pain. I've two video projects that require looping video.  I'm looking at other, non Adobe solutions.  Once Flash video ruled the world, now it's incapable of looping.  The netStream object should simply have a Boolean on it.

ns.loop = true

Why is that hard?

[rewb0rn]

Hi have no issues with videos at the moment, but I would second the idea that Adobe takes a breath from adding features (I do not miss anything at the moment) and takes time to fix known issues.