Video in a Flash

In 2003, I wrote of the options available, and the pitfalls to be avoided, in producing streaming video for the web. The crux of the matter was choosing which video codec to use, important because if visitors to your website are to see your video, they need the right codec.

Additionally, there were container architectures and players to be considered ­ Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Real, or some other option. Whichever you opted for, you inevitably disenfranchised some percentage of your site’s visitors. Platform and browser inconsistencies further complicated the situation and made it almost inevitable that your site would appear broken to some. The situation today is less complicated. There’s really only one reason for that and it’s called Flash video.

It might be considered surprising that an application that provided video support only relatively recently has gained such dominance on the web. Flash came from nowhere to be the number one choice for video distribution on the web ­ not because of its video features, but because it has for years been growing its installed base as a delivery medium for other rich interactive content.

By the time Flash added video to its already impressive array of features, it already had the highest installed base of any web media player, including Windows Media and Quicktime, making it the obvious choice for anyone wanting to deliver web video. That list now includes just about everyone from the BBC to Youtube.

You don’t need Flash itself to produce Flash video. There are many advantages to using the Flash authoring application, which I’ll get to, but there are also many alternatives. The most straightforward of these is simply to upload your existing video to a video hosting site such as Youtube or Motionbox. I looked at the features provided by several hosting websites in December 2008, so if you want to do it this way check out that issue.

Though their free accounts differ in terms of things such as space, HD support and editing facilities, most video-hosting sites have two things in common: they deliver your video in Flash format; and they automatically encode it for you on upload. So, they offer an extremely quick and cheap way to get your video online.

The drawback is that, although you can embed the video player in your own web pages, the hosting site branding and/or advertising will also be displayed, and you have to make do with their player application and skin. Some will allow you to download it to your hard drive, so you could use them as an online conversion service for a small amount of content.

There’s another alternative that doesn’t involve using Flash to author and encode your video. Many video-editing applications will output an .flv file. If you use a recent version of Adobe Premiere, Premiere Elements, or Final Cut Pro and Quicktime Pro on the Mac, you can output .flv files. The screen video capture and editing application Camtasia Studio (see Hands On Digital Imaging, PCW, October 2007) has some excellent Flash video templates and produces all the files you need, including an HTML page. If you’re looking for a no-cost option for converting existing video formats to .flv, and you’re happy working with a command-line interface, try FFmpeg.