[thelist] Deploying Video with Flash

Mike Migurski mike-evolt at teczno.com
Fri Aug 13 14:41:11 CDT 2004


> I am interested in opinions about deploying video using Flash. What possible
> disadvantages could there be in deploying video using Flash as opposed to
> Real/Windows/Quicktime. It seems to me that most people have the Flash
> plug-in and that there will actually be fewer instances of the user needing
> to download new software if I just go with Flash. Quality is as good. Size
> is good.

We made a widget for moveon a while back that they used for a few months
to encapsulate a lot of the video clips they were featuring from time to
time. Flash made it easy to mix-n-match content from different servers, to
take advantage of akamai's service for the video content while still
allowing input forms to send data back to their own machines where user
feedback was requested. Worked okay.

> Why would I want to use anything other than Flash?

Flash is so general purpose, you end up having to re-implement a lot of
really basic stuff (pause/play/ffw/rewind controls) that come free with
quicktime, real, or windows media. So, there's more possibility for
development headaches. Also, videos need to be pre-encapsulated in a swf
wrapper to be usable within flash - software for doing so is less common
than software for compressing to more common formats.

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