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Alfresco Share Flash Preview

benswitzer

Good day.

Been kicking the tires on the latest beta of 3.0 and have been having an issue with the flash document preview. I have only ever seen the dark grey box with the spinning patter in the middle.

I've installed the Windows Setup as per the instructions with MySQL. There no exceptions being through at the default log level.

Do I have to install the other SWF Tools? Thoughts on how I might get this to work.

Thanks,
Ben

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Comments

zaizi

Have you got pdf2swf installed?

Install pdf2swf to enable the Flash preview functionality. Make sure you use the last development snapshots because 0.8.1 from 2007-02-28 does not support some functionalities Alfresco needs to render the preview.

as per http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3

benswitzer

Hi Zaizi.

Yes, I've subsequently installed SWF Tools (swftools 2008-08-21-2105). Its on the path. Restarted Tomcat, no luck.

Thanks

kraemer

Hi,

got exactly the same problem on Kubuntu 8.04, newest swftools installed.
Anyone solved that problem?

pdf2swf works:
alfresco@alfresco-dev:/root$ pdf2swf /usr/lib/vmware-tools/GuestSDK/GuestSDK_Terms_and_Conditions.pdf /home/alfresco/test.swf
NOTICE processing PDF page 1 (612x792:0:0) (move:0:0)
NOTICE processing PDF page 2 (612x792:0:0) (move:0:0)
NOTICE Writing SWF file /home/alfresco/test.swf

swftools version
alfresco@alfresco-dev:/root$ pdf2swf -V
pdf2swf - part of swftools 2008-10-27-2255

Thanks a lot!

benswitzer

Turns out, for me it was a browser issue. Works fine in IE 7, but doesn't work with Firefox 3.0. Firefox being my main browser of course.

mikeh

Turns out, for me it was a browser issue. Works fine in IE 7, but doesn't work with Firefox 3.0. Firefox being my main browser of course.

Make sure you've got Flash 9 installed for Firefox - it's a separate download from the IE7 one.

Mike

benwah1983

I've been trying to get Alfresco to work on a virgin Ubuntu 8.10 Interpid Ibex server edition installation and ran into this same problem (amongst others…). I am not sure how to fix it.

The symptoms are:
When I load a document (click on a document from the document library), it loads a page, the flash applet loads and the little arrows in the middle just keep spinning forever.

This only happens when I upload documents processed by OOo (.doc, .odt, .pdf). Images are handled perfectly by the flash preview.

I've tried with Firefox 3.03 (Linux) with Flash 9 AND 10, Internet Explorer 6 with Flash9, Internet Explorer 8 with Flash 10 and none seem to work.

I'm currently running alfresco as root until I can get it to work properlly, then I will give run it as its own user.

Here is what I did so far:
-Installed sun-java6-jdk (1.6.0-10) (Deb)
-Installed mysql server (Deb)
-Installed the latest Alfresco Labs 3 (the version available today at Alfresco.com's main download link)
-Installed ImageMagick (Deb)
-Installed all required libs to compile swftools
-Downloaded, and compiled swftools-2008-10-27-2255
-Tested swftools (pdf2swf works fine)
-Downloaded and installed OpenOffice.org 3.0's debs
-Configured Alfresco to use MySQL (based mainly on instructions provided on http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3_on_Linux_with_command_line_interface)

My alfresco.sh:

#!/bin/sh
# Start or stop Alfresco server
# Set the following to where Tomcat is installed
ALF_HOME=/opt/Alfresco
cd "$ALF_HOME"
APPSERVER="${ALF_HOME}/tomcat"
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.10/
# Set any default JVM values
export JAVA_OPTS='-Xms128m -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m -server'
# Following only needed for Sun JVMs before to 1.5 update 8
export JAVA_OPTS="${JAVA_OPTS} -XX:CompileCommand=exclude,org/apache/lucene/index/IndexReader\$1,doBody -XX:CompileCommand=exclude,org/alfresco/repo/search/impl/lucene/index/IndexInfo\$Merger,mergeIndexes -XX:CompileCommand=exclude,org/alfresco/repo/search/impl/lucene/index/IndexInfo\$Merger,mergeDeletions"
#
if [ "$1" = "start" ]; then
  if [ -r "$ALF_HOME"/start_oo.sh ]; then
    sh "$ALF_HOME"/start_oo.sh
  fi
  "${APPSERVER}/bin/startup.sh"
#  if [ -r ./virtual_start.sh ]; then
#    sh ./virtual_start.sh
#  fi
elif [ "$1" = "stop" ]; then
  "${APPSERVER}/bin/shutdown.sh"
#  if [ -r ./virtual_start.sh ]; then
#    sh ./virtual_stop.sh
#  fi
  if [ -r "$ALF_HOME"/start_oo.sh ]; then
    killall soffice.bin
  fi
fi‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

This is the content of my start_oo.sh:

/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice "-accept=socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager" "-env:UserInstallation=file:////opt/openoffice.org3" -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard -nocrashrep -norestore &‍

I can confirm soffice.bin runs fine, everytime I upload a document, soffice.bin shows up in "top". In addition, a thumbnail of the documents is created (doc, odt and pdf), so I guess OOo reads the document fine.

Here is the output of Alfresco:

CompilerOracle: exclude org/apache/lucene/index/IndexReader$1.doBody
CompilerOracle: exclude org/alfresco/repo/search/impl/lucene/index/IndexInfo$Merger.mergeIndexes
CompilerOracle: exclude org/alfresco/repo/search/impl/lucene/index/IndexInfo$Merger.mergeDeletions
4-Nov-2008 3:11:49 AM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol init
INFO: Initializing Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
4-Nov-2008 3:11:50 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
INFO: Initialization processed in 7573 ms
4-Nov-2008 3:11:51 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService start
INFO: Starting service Catalina
4-Nov-2008 3:11:51 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine start
INFO: Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/5.5.23
4-Nov-2008 3:11:51 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost start
INFO: XML validation disabled
4-Nov-2008 3:11:57 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive share.war
03:12:28,874  INFO  [web.site.FrameworkHelper] Successfully Initialized Web Framework
4-Nov-2008 3:12:29 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
INFO: Deploying web application archive alfresco.war
03:15:15,823  INFO  [config.xml.XMLConfigService$PropertyConfigurer] Loading properties file from class path resource [alfresco/file-servers.properties]
03:16:51,377  INFO  [domain.schema.SchemaBootstrap] Schema managed by database dialect org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect.
03:16:57,314  INFO  [domain.schema.SchemaBootstrap] No changes were made to the schema.
03:17:15,006 User:System INFO  [repo.admin.ConfigurationChecker] The Alfresco root data directory ('dir.root') is: /opt/Alfresco/alf_data
03:17:15,524 User:System INFO  [admin.patch.PatchExecuter] Checking for patches to apply …
03:17:18,011 User:System INFO  [admin.patch.PatchExecuter] No patches were required.
03:17:18,030 User:System INFO  [repo.module.ModuleServiceImpl] Found 0 module(s).
03:17:24,726 User:System INFO  [service.descriptor.DescriptorService] Alfresco JVM - v1.6.0_10-b33; maximum heap size 506.313MB
03:17:24,730 User:System INFO  [service.descriptor.DescriptorService] Alfresco started (Labs): Current version 3.0.0 (b 1164) schema 131 - Installed version 3.0.0 (b 1164) schema 131
03:17:26,480 User:System WARN  [alfresco.linkvalidation.LinkValidationServiceImpl] LinkValidationService Update is not running (virtualization server not registered or started)
4-Nov-2008 3:18:35 AM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol start
INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-8080
4-Nov-2008 3:18:36 AM org.apache.catalina.storeconfig.StoreLoader load
INFO: Find registry server-registry.xml at classpath resource
4-Nov-2008 3:18:37 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 407283 ms‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

kraemer

When I load a document (click on a document from the document library), it loads a page, the flash applet loads and the little arrows in the middle just keep spinning forever.
This only happens when I upload documents processed by OOo (.doc, .odt, .pdf). Images are handled perfectly by the flash preview.

Confirmed. Same here. Setup identical.
A normal 'pdf' transformed on commandline via 'pdf2swf' can be viewed in Firefox.

I guess the pdf file is transformed on demand using 'pdf2swf' and streamed to the browser, right? At least I could not find a .swf rendition in the repository.
How to debug this ? Only debugging output I could find (log4j) was something like this:

/api/node/workspace/SpacesStore/02a38305-ae29-40b1-ae0e-a41a5382493e/content/thumbnails/webpreview
15:02:21,509 DEBUG [web.scripts.DeclarativeRegistry] Web Script index lookup for uri /api/node/workspace/SpacesStore/02a38305-ae29-40b1-ae0e-a41a5382493e/content/thumbnails/webpreview took 0.592714ms
15:02:21,510 DEBUG [scripts.servlet.WebScriptServletRequest] Content Type: null
15:02:21,561 DEBUG [web.scripts.AbstractRuntime] Agent: null

Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

jeckman

I'm having the same issue.

You can see in /opt/alfresco/tomcat/temp/Alfresco (exact path might vary based on where you've put temp files) the interim docs from the transform:

ImageMagickContentTransform_init_source_39434.gif
ImageMagickContentTransformer_init_target_39435.png
PDFToSWFContentTransformer_source_39453.pdf
PDFToSWFContentTransformer_target_39454.swf

I can even open the _target_39454.swf in an SWF player and see that it is a flash movie with each page from the pdf as a frame.

However, from the web side, in FF 3 or Safari, all I get is the spinning dark grey circle - no error message.

This makes me believe it is not an issue with pdf2swf, or ImageMagick, or soffice transformations, but an issue with the swf that is supposed to display the preview.

Image previews work fine, and the pdfs and office docs do get a custom thumbnail in the document library list.

mikeh

Which version of pdf2swf do you have installed?

jeckman

Which version of pdf2swf do you have installed?

swftools 2008-10-27-2255

Compiled from source out of CVS.

chr_ypma

i have exactly the same problem, anybody already came up with a solution?

gaebriel

Same problem here. As mentioned by previous posters, the image preview works so I get a thumbnail of the first page in the document library list, but the flash movie only comes across as the spinning arrows on a dark grey background.

I've experienced the same result on CentOS 5.2 x86 and x64 builds - both with the most recent updates. I followed the documentation at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Installing_Labs_3_on_Linux_with_command_line_interface and switched to a MySQL database server. I downloaded and compiled the latest version of swftools (2008-11-12) http://www.swftools.org/swftools-2008-11-12-0905.tar.gz.

I've tried Firefox 3.0.4 on windows and Linux, with flash 10 on windows and flash 9 on linux. I've also tried IE7 on Windows with Flash 10 and it fails. I'd happily provide any additional details for anyone that thinks they might be able to solve this. TIA.

benswitzer

When I started this thread, I thought this was a server side issue. Turns out it was client side, at least for me.

Running the latest build of Share from the SVN, along with the latest build of SWFTools I can see the Flash preview in IE 7 with Flash 9 or 10. It doesn't work (other than the spinning wheel) in Firefox.

I know this isn't all that helpful, but just wanted to let people know what my experiences have been thus far.

jeckman

There's definitely a client side part of the issue, but I still think the problem is something server side that some clients manage to handle and others don't.

Without changing anything in my install, but hitting it from a windows machine on my local network, I can see the previews fine in IE 7. (This IE 7 tells me it is running flash player 9,0,45,0 says http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about)

Same windows machine, Firefox 3, just the spinning beach ball. (With flash player 10,0,12, 36).

Different windows machine (VMWare Fusion running on the mac) with Flash Player 10,0,12,26 - spinning beach ball.

Safari, Cruz, Camino, FF 3, on Mac OS all failed - all running flash player 9,0,124,0).

Maybe the trick is a flash player old enough?

jeckman

Upgraded Flash Player on Mac OS X to the latest - still has same problem (spinning beach ball).

Maybe it is an older Flash PLayer 9 that's required?

gaebriel

I found a link to install previous versions of Flash at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html. Installing the version 9 ActiveX control content debugger from http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/9/flashplayer_9_ax_debug.exe got me running version 9.0.151.0 according to http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_15507.

My windows workstation I'm testing with is an XP Pro install with SP3 as a VMware Server 2.0 guest. Firefox 3.0.4 with Flash 9.0.151.0 installed still doesn't work, and since I installed that from an old download I had, it's not giving me any debug information. Running IE6 on this machine pops up these errors now when I try to preview a PDF file.

VerifyError: Error #1107: The ABC data is corrupt, attempt to read out of bounds.
ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable MainTimeline is not defined.

After taking a snapshot and upgrading to IE7 and installing the debugging flash 9 ActiveX control again and verifying I'm runing version 9.0.151.0. I still get the same errors.

VerifyError: Error #1107: The ABC data is corrupt, attempt to read out of bounds.
ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable MainTimeline is not defined.

Do these debugging errors help anyone?

gaebriel

According to http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-14054 at least one of these errors - #1107 started happening after Flash version 9.0.45. Looking more closely at a couple posts ago, I see the guy who got it working in IE7 was running Flash 9.0.45. Perhaps a different version of the swftools… I'll try to test this when I get a chance and let you all know what I find. In the meantime, anyone that has a good solution, please let me know! Thanks.

chr_ypma

I will test different versions of Flash on both Vista(firefox and IE8) and MacOSX (firefox and Safari), post my results later this day.

from http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14266 I downloaded all versions, from v9r115 on it doesn't work anymore. The latest release working as far as I can see now is v9.47.

jeckman

I will test different versions of Flash on both Vista(firefox and IE8) and MacOSX (firefox and Safari), post my results later this day.

Thanks - I was not very rigorous in my testing to note the trio of OS version (Windows XP), Browser Version (IE 7) and Flash version (10,x,x,x). It would be good to have verification, though I think we'll find nothing later than 9.0.47 works.

I didn't see a specific issue for this in the Alfresco Enterprise 3.0 Jira - once you gather the data, can you open one?

chr_ypma

https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALFCOM-2081

Please add comments if you want to.

jeckman

To recap what I've narrowed down.

I'm currently running Alfresco Labs 3.0C, using the Tomcat bundle, with MySQL, on a Mac OS X box.

swftools compiled from source:

$ pdf2swf –version
pdf2swf - part of swftools 2008-10-27-2255‍‍

Basically, If I take pdf2swf away (change it's name so that the command isn't in the path) I get single-page previews. (Multipage pdf uploaded, the preview is just the first page).

If I take Flash away, I get no previews - just a note to install Flash to get them.

If I leave pdf2swf present (these are all with Firefox 3, but I think it is the flash version difference that is significant):

With Flash Player 9.0.47:
- Flash preview works - multipage preview of PDFs with next/previous working
- Flash upload is broken, which means you can't upload at all.

With Flash Player 9.0.151:
- Flash preview fails, with spinning beach ball. SWFs exist, but don't display.
- Flash upload works.

With Flash Player 10.x:
- Flash preview fails, with spinning beach ball.
- No flash upload, but the system recognizes that and offers non-flash version

So, is this an swftools problem, or as the Jira entry suggests some kind of Flex level problem consuming the movies swftools creates?

Is it that Flash Player 9.0.47 works in some way that all the others are broken, or is just less picky, and thus "succeeds" with an SWF that it should not be displaying?

Looks like the best option for me for now - I was trying to do a demo and screencast it - is to remove swftools, so that at least I can see previews, and have upload working.

I guess I could cheat and record the screencast in pieces - one showing upload working and one showing preview working, with the magic of the cutting room floor in between, but that's not really my style.

steve

Hi,

If it helps, I have the following versions working for file upload and flash preview:
Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124 (in FF3 on my Mac)

pdf2swf - part of swftools 2008-10-08-0802 (on RHEL5 server machine)
You can download that version here: http://www.swftools.org/swftools-2008-10-08-0802.tar.gz

Hope that helps somewhat,

Steve

jeckman

If it helps, I have the following versions working for file upload and flash preview:
Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124 (in FF3 on my Mac)

pdf2swf - part of swftools 2008-10-08-0802 (on RHEL5 server machine)
You can download that version here: http://www.swftools.org/swftools-2008-10-08-0802.tar.gz

Thanks Steve! I was able to get everything working with the same configuration on my Mac OS X server.

I'll now try the later Flash 9 player as well.

Perhaps the issue really was with something about the way my version of SWF Tools handled the pdfs?

chr_ypma

If it helps, I have the following versions working for file upload and flash preview:
Shockwave Flash 9.0 r124 (in FF3 on my Mac)

pdf2swf - part of swftools 2008-10-08-0802 (on RHEL5 server machine)
You can download that version here: http://www.swftools.org/swftools-2008-10-08-0802.tar.gz

Thanks Steve! I was able to get everything working with the same configuration on my Mac OS X server.

I'll now try the later Flash 9 player as well.

Perhaps the issue really was with something about the way my version of SWF Tools handled the pdfs?

Confirmed, it's working now

nimbus58

Just for info:

It works with:
Firefox 3
Flash 9,0,47,0
swftools 2008-10-27-2255

tonytony

I'm convinced that this is a Javascript issue and the FF js interpreter is not as forgiving as IE. I tried all different combinations of Flash and pdf2swf and I can't get the preview to work in FF 3.x while it works fine in IE 6 and 7 and SRWare Iron (a google chrome derivative). Loading the preview page shows 1 error and 1 warning both on FF (firebug) and IE.

steve

Hi tonytony,

Can you post the errors and warnings please?

Thanks,

Steve

tonytony

Steve: Give me a minute and I'll post the info, the problem is that you cant easily cut and paste from firebug and this forum doesn't allow posting screenshots.

Just to add to this discussion, I just tested minefield, the firefox alpha which has an advanced javascript interpreter, and the preview works fine.

firebug output

GET http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/share/proxy/alfresco//slin...e/(bunch-of-numbers-and-letters)?filter=node 295ms   utilities.js (line 15)
! Empty string passed to getElementById(). toolbar.js (line 888)
  ()  widgetPermissions = widget.get("value") .split(",");

Get http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/share/proxy/alfresco/api/n...(bunch-of-numbers-and-letters)/comments?startindex=0&pageSize=10 81ms utilities.js (line15)
! Expected declaration but found '*'. Skipped to next declaration. javascript:top.location+"__flashplugin_unique__"‍‍‍‍‍‍

I installed the latest nightly build, and now IE does not show errors. (good job)

ksapenov

Hi guys,
My quick workaround was to change config settings in thumbnail-service-context.xml, so that swf tools generate version 10 content, instead of version 9 (set by default).

                        <!– Web Preview thumbnail options –>
                                <bean class="org.alfresco.repo.thumbnail.ThumbnailDefinition">
                                   <property name="name" value="webpreview" />
                                        <property name="mimetype" value="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
                                        <property name="transformationOptions">
                                        <bean class="org.alfresco.repo.content.transform.swf.SWFTransformationOptions">
                                                <property name="flashVersion" value="10"/>
                                        </bean>
                                </property>
                        </bean>
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Original post at http://ihatecubicle.blogspot.com/2009/01/alfresco-share-flash-preview.html

hope this helps,
Khazret Sapenov

rjreb

I found on Debian 64 bit it helps if you have the libpoppler-dev installed before compiling swftools-2009-02-16-1757