283
Chapter 11: Video
Digital video and Flash
Adobe®
Flash®
CS4
Professional is a powerful tool for incorporating video footage into web-based presentations. The
FLV and F4V (H.264) video format offers technological and creative benefits that let you fuse video together with data,
graphics, sound, and interactive control. FLV or F4V video lets you easily put video on a web page in a format that
almost anyone can view.
How you choose to deploy your video determines how you create your video content, and how you integrate it with
Flash. You can incorporate video into Flash in the following ways:
Stream video with Adobe Flash Media Server
You can host video content on Adobe® Flash® Media Server, a server
solution optimized to deliver real-time media. Flash Media Server uses the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), a
protocol designed for real-time server applications such as streaming video and audio content. You can host your own
Flash Media Server, or use a hosted Flash® Video® Streaming Service (FVSS). Adobe has partnered with several content
delivery network (CDN) providers to offer hosted services for delivering on-demand FLV or F4V file video across
high-performance, reliable networks. Built with Flash Media Server and integrated directly into the delivery, tracking,
and reporting infrastructure of the CDN network, FVSS provides the most effective way to deliver FLV or F4V files to
the largest possible audience without the hassle of setting up and maintaining your own streaming server hardware
and network.
To create Flash applications using streaming video, you import locally stored video clips into your Flash documents,
and later upload them to the server. To control video playback and provide intuitive controls for users to interact with
the streaming video, use the FLVPlayback component or Adobe® ActionScript®.
Progressively download video from a web server
If you don’t have access to Flash Media Server or FVSS, or your
video needs are for a low-volume website with only limited amounts of video content, you can consider
progressive
downloading
. Progressively downloading a video clip from a web server doesn’t provide the real-time performance that
Flash Media Server does; however, you can use relatively large video clips, and keep the size of your published SWF
files to a minimum.
To control video playback and provide intuitive controls for users to interact with the video, use the FLVPlayback
component or ActionScript.
Embed video in the Flash document
You can embed a small, short-duration video file directly into the Flash
document, and publish it as part of the SWF file. Embedding video content directly into the Flash SWF file significantly
increases the size of published file, and is only suitable for small video files (typically less then 10 seconds in length).
In addition, the audio to video synchronization (also known as audio/video sync) can become mis-synchronized when
using longer video clips embedded in the Flash document. Another disadvantage to embedding video within the SWF
file is that you cannot update the video without republishing the SWF file.
For video tutorials about working with video in Flash, see the following:
•
Using video in Flash:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0136
•
Creating FLV and F4V files:
www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4097_xp
•
Using Adobe Media Encoder:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0138
•
Creating content for Adobe After Effects:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0139
•
Working with Flash and After Effects:
www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4098_xp
Updated 5 March 2009
