Technical information

by Forest Key and Chris Hock
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Figure 4: Flash MX Professional 2004 Media Components support both progressive
and streaming FLV files; to control display of slides you can use media behaviors.
Using progressive FLV files has these advantages:
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During authoring, you need to publish only the Flash movie interface for
previewing or testing part or all of your Flash movie. This results in
faster preview times and quicker turnaround on iterative
experimentation.
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For delivery, video begins playing as soon as the first segment has been
downloaded and cached to local disk.
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At runtime, video files are streamed from the local disk into the SWF file,
with no limitation on file size or duration. There are no audio synch
issues or memory restrictions.
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The frame rate of the video file can be different from the frame rate of the
SWF file, allowing for greater flexibility in setting up a project.
Producing Streaming FLV Files
Last, but hardly least, you can also stream video and audio files from Flash
Communication Server (available separately). This approach provides
efficient delivery of FLV (and MP3) files and of fers these advantages:
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Less client resources (memory and disk space), since the clients do not
need to download the entire file.
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More efficient use of network resources, since the only bits that are sent
to the client are bits that are viewed.
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More secure delivery of media, because media does not get saved to the
client’s cache when streamed.
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Better tracking, reporting, and logging ability—key for industries such as
video ad serving.
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Ability to deliver live video and audio, or to capture video from clien t’s
webcam or DV cameras.
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Multiway and multiuser streaming for creating chat and real -time
collaboration applications