Flash Format

Strengths

  1. Flash video playback leverages the Flash plugin, which has an installed base approaching 99.5% of all computers.

  2. Flash video embedded in web pages has become the most popular format online (Youtube), even though most Flash files seen online are not streaming, but rather download progressively.

  3. Just like Windows Media, Flash can stream HD files at low bitrates quite well today if your audience has the computing power to decode the h.264 streams in realtime.

  4. The DoIT Streaming Service supports the Flash format on the Adobe Flash Interactive Server 3..

Weaknesses

  1. The ease of use for end users comes at a price: it is far more complex to create and maintain a web site that uses Flash streaming than other formats, as the "player" is a custom application that needs to be hosted on a web server. The Flash browser plugin alone cannot stream Flash videos. A "player" flash application needs to be loaded in web pages and link to the streaming server. This player also needs updates as Flash is a moving standard and security upgrades in the past have broken our players. Unless you are committed to long term maintenance of a web site, the complex nature of Flash streaming may not be worth mastering for the casual online video publisher.

  2. Encoding tools for Flash are generally not free. Converting existing online content to Flash will reduce quality, so if you are looking at migrating Windows Media or Quicktime or Real files to Flash, be prepared to find the original master videos or accept a siginificant loss in quality.

  3. Playback of h.264 Flash video is very CPU intensive. At resolutions where h.264 would show distinct image improvement over VP6, the CPU of the playback computer will be taxed heavily, about twice as much as the same quality file in Windows Media 9 requires. Encoding h.264 files takes even more CPU, tying up computers 10 times longer than other formats. If you plan on heavily using h.264, plan on purchasing a hardware-based encoder.

    Playback speed should increase with the release of Flash 10 if you have a powerful GPU.


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