Beginner's Guide to Adobe Flash/Video

Video in Flash can seem daunting, but once you've got down the basics, it really becomes a matter of repeating the same series of steps to achieve a desired result. For this book, we'll be covering the following topics:

1. Supported Video Codecs
2. Importing Video
3. Using Flash Video Encoder
4. Using The FLVPlayback Component

Flash designates video files by giving it a .flv extension, which stands for Flash Video. Flash Video is quickly becoming one of the premiere video formats due to its ease of use and small file size.

There are a number of ways you can display video content.

• Load a Flash Video File at Runtime, which involves creating a separate .flv file and uploading it to your server, then loading it from another Flash movie.
• Embedding the video directly into the .swf file. This method is good for compatibility as it only requires Flash Player 6 or later, but can also result in large file size for the SWF file.
• Import a video into a flash document and then exporting it as a .flv file.
• Simply encoding a video using the Flash Video Encoder.
• Using a third party application such as Quicktime or Sorensen Squeeze to create the flash video file. Flash 8 will also allow you to link video content in Quicktime format without embedding them directly into your .swf file.