Flash cashing in on growth of Web video

[fasteez]

macromedia made a f...in good move providing better video support in the last releases of flash...

same for streaming presentation like flex ( im not sure )

great applications

[monovich]

I do like Flash video and it's tons easier to integrate than some other formats, but it seems more processor dependant which sorta sucks. I get more stuttering with it. Anyone know why this might be?

[Neil]

I have a feeling that flash videos are used since it's harder to download the footage and they get to keep the traffic of the users coming to the site. Flash videos have the player and then footage separated. You can't just 'view source' and find the direct url, you know?

[DrQuincy]

You're right it it very difficult to get hold of the footage. However, the compression ratio on Flash is superb and it is available for most platforms and this is really pulling the punters in!

[blakshep]

``If you could have told me Google Video, YouTube and all these others would use Flash as their technology 10 months ago, I would have said you are crazy''
i'm wondering for years: why didn't it happen earlier ?
this is pretty obvious i think, because there is no other crossplatform way to play video on the internet, but everyone have a flash player. mediaplayer only works well wtih windows, quicktime is only works well in mac, realplayer is a joke.....so what would be the plan if not flash?

[strosek]

You're right it it very difficult to get hold of the footage. However, the compression ratio on Flash is superb and it is available for most platforms and this is really pulling the punters in!

http://www.flash-decompiler.com/features/

[spacefrog]

the biggest problem and why i HATE flash video is the lack of hardwaresupport and the really lousy quality if you want to see the clips in other resolutions (fullscreen etc.)

it's a step back in quality and of course it's hard to recompress these movies to
a more usable video-format (supporting HW-scaling, overlay etc...)

[DrQuincy]

http://www.flash-decompiler.com/features/

http://www.kindisoft.com/products.aspx

[Shilts]

the biggest problem and why i HATE flash video is the lack of hardwaresupport and the really lousy quality if you want to see the clips in other resolutions (fullscreen etc.)

it's a step back in quality and of course it's hard to recompress these movies to
a more usable video-format (supporting HW-scaling, overlay etc...)

Maybe I am speaking out of turn here but surely the point of using Flash here is for multi-platform, cross browser ubiquity? Surely support for what would have to be specific types of hardware would endanger any chance of this ubiquitous goal?

I can take the point of it being hard to recompress, however, the point about quality is surely inaccurate, as the quality of compression and the codec used is supposed to be industry leading.

[DrQuincy]

Maybe I am speaking out of turn here but surely the point of using Flash here is for multi-platform, cross browser ubiquity? Surely support for what would have to be specific types of hardware would endanger any chance of this ubiquitous goal?

You've hit the nail on the head.

[strosek]

http://www.kindisoft.com/products.aspx

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

I win

[BigJay]

flash 7 uses sorenson 3 internally. It CAN look good if you use the right software t compress the3 video (sorenson squeeze) but more importantly if the compression is set too high then it will always terrible. Flash 8 uses H.268 internally (i get the number wrong) so it compresses even smaller but needs a better processor to deal with it.

Flash has a huge penetration rate and is even found on hand held devices. So it is the perfect video player.

[opus13]

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

I win

you pointed to a product that works with less than 5% of the computers out there.... yes. you win, but no... not really.

[spacefrog]

hmm....
this type of hw-support i'm speaking of is only on the playerside
it has nothing to to how the movie is encoded

today every graphicscard and every gfx-driver on every OS - be it linux/osx or windows
provides this great support for videooperations in HARDWARE - the only problem is the playerside.

flash video can be played with the flash-plugin ONLY
and since this plugin lacks this kind of hw-support
it's a technological backstep (speaking only from the video part here...)
(it only makes limited use of the 2D HW-support like alpha channel, bitmap-caching etc.)

I repeat the limit is only on the playerside - no change in encoding or whatever
would be required.

so writing a decent player or better HW support in the plugin - which then would actually make USE of the hardware you already have in your OSX, Linux or whatever Box you use would solve the problem

[fasteez]

dont need to decompile flash to view videos, get videoDownloader extension for firefox ( if u use another browser well .. sorry ) so you can grab the video content on your disk , after that theres a small standalone player for flv. ( im sure media player classic will support that sooner ).

pêace

[strosek]

you pointed to a product that works with less than 5% of the computers out there.... yes. you win, but no... not really.


http://www.etrusoft.com/
http://www.hyperionics.com/
http://www.techsmith.com/ (i like that one)

gee all you have to do is google screen capture software and there you have it. Nothing can save you from the Screen capture =D


I win again

[Shenan]

Flash 8 uses H.268 internally (i get the number wrong) so it compresses even smaller but needs a better processor to deal with it.

Flash 8 uses a proprietary compression format by On2 called VP6 (http://www.on2.com/technology/on2-difference/). They might have an option for H.264 encoding as well, but VP6 is supposedly smaller and higher quality. They sell their own multi-pass VBR encoder for the highest quality.

I like Flash video - I think it has finally made web video really practical.

[strosek]

oh thanks for the link. I might just turn all the divx mov avi wmv ect ect all to swf so i can once and for all get rid of those gay formats testing there codec now

[Shenan]

No problem, but that might not be a good idea. Unless you have the original source video, if you transcode from one compressed format to another, you'll just lose even more picture quality. You may be able to get smaller videos, but you can't get higher quality than what you already have.

[Squeakypics]

Flashes FLV format is very good indeed (especially with streaming) but what has always struck me as a bit odd is that If I do some animation in Flash I can't just export it to FLV. I have to render out as some kind of bitmap movie format and then convert it.
I guess Macromedia doesn't like animators:shrug:

Once you do do it it is great for CD showreels!

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