Flash has become a very popular way to distribute and play online video, due to the fact that it can play video directly from within the web browser itself, by using the Flash Player browser plug-in. One of its downsides is that it doesn’t have particularly good platform support and was until recently only optimized to run on the Win 32 platform.
Whilst there are more platform compatible video file formats, not many formats, other than Flash, support playback both within the browser (via plug-in) and standalone. Also, the Flash player enjoys much higher browser penetration, meaning that the Flash plug-in is installed on many more computers than any of its competitors (such as Real Media).
A significant drawback with Flash video is that it’s considerably more hardware intensive than traditional video formats. This can result in Flash video files dropping frames and skipping whilst playing. Such issues aren’t experienced by most other video formats.
Flash video files aren’t actual video files, per se. A Flash video file is merely a container for other file formats. The video within a Flash video file is encoded to either TrueMotion VP6 format or H.263 format. All sound is in Mp3 codec.
The next planned version of Adobe Flash (Version 9 Update 3), due for imminent release, will support MPEG-4 and H.264, for improved video playback and streaming support.
Whilst there are more platform compatible video file formats, not many formats, other than Flash, support playback both within the browser (via plug-in) and standalone. Also, the Flash player enjoys much higher browser penetration, meaning that the Flash plug-in is installed on many more computers than any of its competitors (such as Real Media).
A significant drawback with Flash video is that it’s considerably more hardware intensive than traditional video formats. This can result in Flash video files dropping frames and skipping whilst playing. Such issues aren’t experienced by most other video formats.
Flash video files aren’t actual video files, per se. A Flash video file is merely a container for other file formats. The video within a Flash video file is encoded to either TrueMotion VP6 format or H.263 format. All sound is in Mp3 codec.
The next planned version of Adobe Flash (Version 9 Update 3), due for imminent release, will support MPEG-4 and H.264, for improved video playback and streaming support.