Learning ActionScript 3.0, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12. Video

IN THIS CHAPTER

Encoding

Components

Full-Screen Video

Captions

Writing Your Own Player

What’s Next?

These days, you have to live under a rock not to repeatedly hear how prevalent Flash Platform video solutions are. Video playback is largely responsible for dramatic increases in Flash Player use over the past several years, and Flash Player is now the first choice for the world’s largest video delivery site, Google’s YouTube. Flash is estimated to drive more than 75 percent of all Internet video playback, in part because Flash Player is installed on more than 99 percent of computers in the world market, and in part because it’s among the most reliable and easy to use cross-platform video technologies.

At the time of this writing, Flash video has also been the subject of much debate as it faces challenges from emerging interest in the next phase of HTML development, HTML5. Although HTML5 is not expected to be ratified as an official standard for some time (many theorize that wide browser adoption may not happen until 2011 or 2012, but that ratification could happen as late as 2022), the allure of video playback without reliance on a browser plug-in is already attracting attention.

In this debate much has been made of replacing the proprietary Flash video format, FLV, with other open video formats. However, although support for video playback within HTML5 is improving, no video file format is currently part of the HTML5 specification. At present, which codec (the software ...