Flash 8 Cookbook

Chapter 18. Working with Video

Flash Player 8 can deliver better video quality than Flash Players 6 and 7 could. With the new On2 VP6 codec that is part of the Flash Player 8 plug-in, you can encode your video content to display better detail, better color, and smoother motion. You still have the option to use the Sorenson Spark codec with any Flash Player 6, 7, or 8 content, and you’ll learn later in this chapter how to choose the appropriate codec for your Flash production.

Regardless of how you deploy web-based video, there are a few principles of video that you should understand. Most video files, even after heavy compression, are substantially larger than other files loaded into a web browser, such as HTML, XML, CSS, or other Flash content. One of the most critical factors of a video file is its bit rate, also referred to as a data rate. The data rate of a video file determines how much data (in bits or kilobits per second) is required to sustain smooth playback of the video. Every computer or device connected to the Internet has a connection speed, or available bandwidth, which determines how fast content over the Web can load and display in a browser.

The data rate of any given Flash Video file is fixed, and can be allocated across a variety of video properties, including frame rate (how smooth the motion appears within the content), frame size (how large the video displays on the screen), and quality (how much compression is applied to each frame of video). You can use the ...