ActionScript™ 3.0 Bible

Chapter 27. Adding Video

Introduction

In this chapter

• Working with Flash Video files

• Understanding the Video and NetStream classes

• Building an FLVPlayback application

Flash is the most popular format for delivering video on the Web and will stay that way for at least the foreseeable future. This is due not only to the prevalence of the Flash plug‐in, but also to the lightweight nature of the plug‐in and the codecs (short for compression‐decompression) and the ease of creating Flash applications that integrate video.

When you are displaying video within a Flash application, you have two basic options: load all the video data into the player when it is compiled, called embedding, or load the video data into the player via a request. The second of these options is covered in this chapter.

Working with Flash Video Files

In this section, you learn how to make a FLV file from an existing digital video file. You also learn the different ways in which you can access a Flash Video file in a Flash movie. Later in this chapter, you learn how to load the FLV file into a movie using ActionScript.

Making an FLV file with the Flash Video Encoder

If you're using Flash CS3 Professional then you already have the Flash Video Encoder installed. By default, Flash Video Encoder is installed in a directory called Adobe Flash CS3 9 Video Encoder that is placed in the Adobe directory in the default location for program files. For example, on Windows, the application is installed at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash ...