Flash Video

From MediaCoderWiki

FLV (Flash Video) is a file format used to deliver video over the Internet to the Macromedia Flash Player version 6, 7, 8, or 9. FLV content may also be embedded within SWF files. Notable users of the FLV format include Google Video and YouTube. Flash Video is viewable on most operating systems, via the Macromedia flash player or one of several third-party programs such as MPlayer and VLC media player (since version 0.8.4a).

Contents 1 Flash Player 2 Video Format 3 Delivery options 4 External links

Flash Player

The Adobe Flash Player is a multimedia and application player created and distributed by Macromedia. It plays SWF files which can be created by the Macromedia Flash authoring tool, Adobe Flex or a number of other Adobe and third party tools. It has support for a programing language called ActionScript, which can be used to display Flash Video from an SWF file. Because the Flash Player runs as a browser plug-in, it is possible to embed Flash Video in web pages and view the video within a web browser.

Video Format

Most FLV files use a variant of H.263 to encode the video. Some FLV files may instead use the screen codec, a simple animation composed of a sequence of screenshots. Flash Player 8 also supports On2 Technologies' VP6 codec. Support for encoding FLV files with the VP6 codec is provided by an encoding tool included with Adobe's Macromedia Flash Professional 8 product, On2's Flix encoding tools, Sorenson Squeeze, and some other third party tools.

FLV files may contain audio in PCM, ADPCM, or MP3 format. FLV is limited to one video and one audio stream per file.

Delivery options

FLV files can be delivered in three different ways:

• Embedded in a SWF file using the Flash authoring tool (supported in Flash Player 6 and later)
• Streamed via RTMP to the Flash Player using the Flash Media Server (formerly called Flash Communication Server)
  This is the best option for allowing advanced seek capabilities and automatic bandwidth detection.
• Progressively downloaded via HTTP (supported in Flash Player 7 and later.)

External links

• Video to Flash Converters with FLV support
  • Video to Flash Encoder
  • Flash Video MX
  • Turbine Video Encoder 2
  • Sothink FlashVideo Encoder, Convert various video formats into SWF or FLV
  • SwishVideo2
  • Media Cleaner
  • ffmpeg a free command line video converter
  • libflv a free screen video format encoder
  • Sorenson Squeeze
  • On2 Flix
  • GeoVid Flash Video Converter
  • Riva FLV Encoder, a free video-to-FLV encoder (uses ffmpeg)

• Conversion from FLV
  • iSquint a free converter to mp4 for Mac
  • FFmpeg can convert flv files up to flash v7, as of ffmpeg CVS 20060302
  • Total Video Converter converts FLV to any other format
  • SUPER SUPER = (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer)
• Macromedia
  • Macromedia Flash
  • Macromedia Flash Video Articles
  • The Macromedia Flash SWF File Format Specification, Version 7

• Flash Player
  • Download Flash Player 7
  • Download Flash Player 8
  • Download Flash Player 9

• Samples
  • FlashVideoFAQ Compare samples of the same source footage encoded with multiple software packages as both Flash 7 and Flash 8 video.