Technical information

by Forest Key and Chris Hock
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Executive Summary
This white paper provides a general overview of the video
capabilities of the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 platform.
Introduction
Video and the Internet seem like a match made in heaven. Video is the rich
media medium that most closely simulates our day-to-day visual
experiences. The Internet is a boundless playground to search for and
consume interesting content. Thousands of compelling websites should
integrate video with data, content and interactive controls to create rich
experiences that go way beyond what is possible with a static television
set… right?
Unfortunately early video content on the web has tended to be very static
and television like—a rectangle of content playing back on your computer
monitor, usually in a separate pop-up window covering the website pages
that spawned it. The images were small, ugly, and the overall experience
was poor.
Several technical challenges have kept designers from fully leveraging video
content, including:
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Bandwidth limitations. Video is a data-intensive format, requiring
megabytes of data to display even short video clips of less than one
minute in length. The growth of broadband has greatly alleviated this
technical obstacle, and increasingly large numbers of users have the
bandwidth required to receive video content via the web.
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Complexity of authoring video for the web. There have been no
standard tool sets to allow for creation of interactivity, navigation control,
and fusion of video with other rich media content. Furthermore, most
video playback clients are not pre-installed on most end users' systems,
requiring lengthy downloads and a break in the overall immersive
experience when visiting a website.
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Lack of compelling integration of video and other web content. Most
video formats for the web offer no rich media capabilities beyond
playback and display of video in a rectangular window. Video on the web
needs to go beyond the television concept!
Macromedia Flash and Flash Video
Flash offers technological and creative benefits that free designers to create
immersive rich experiences that fuse video together with data, graphics,
sound, and dynamic interactive control. The advantages of using Flash
include: