Page 1 of 4 The genesis for this article started over a conversation between Scott Fegette and myself at TODCON 8 this past May. Both of us are spending an increasing portion of our time exploring the subject of the uses, abuses and potential for Flash Video among users and Adobe customers. Though we move in different circles, a major intersection point for our careers has become the number of emails and conversations we have had with people that start with, "I can't seem to get this Flash Video stuff working."
When we compared notes at TODCON we realized the root of most problems with Flash Video is not the technology but the actual creation and deployment of Flash Video. More specifically, there appears to be unfamiliarity with the intimate relationship between data rates and bandwidth when the FLV is created. In this article we will deal with this relationship and strip away some of the mystery surrounding it.
No matter how you approach the subject you have to understand that you really aren't dealing with video. What you are doing is managing a stream of audio and video data into the Flash Player.
In many respects, what you become is the manager of a river dam. If the floodgates are at the proper setting, the water flows out of the dam and stays within the banks of the river below the dam. An improper floodgate setting releases far too much water for the river to handle and the town downstream from the dam gets flooded out.
When it comes to video, if the floodgates are wide open the video plays and stops. What is happening is that a torrent of video and audio data is overwhelming the Flash Player. When this occurs the player will buffer the data and then release it. This explains why the video stops and starts. The most common cause of this video issue is the use of an overly large data rate when the FLV is created. As one of the authors is fond of saying, "Set the data rate too high and what you are attempting to do is this: Push a watermelon through a worm".
Another common misconception is that you need to write ActionScript to control Flash Video playback. This is not exactly correct. The ActionScript you write controls the data stream. The play() and pause () methods of the NetStream class turn the stream on and off. They don't turn the video on and off. This is an important concept to grasp when approaching Flash video.
Keywords
Flash, Flash 8 professional, Flash Video
