Streaming video in a Flash: developers support Flash MX for creating engaging content - Macromedia

Post, June, 2002 by Christine Bunish

Although many companies that built infrastructure for streaming video and established large-scale video encoding enterprises took it on the chin last year, streaming video is by no means dead. Quick as a flash - Macro-media Flash MX and Flash Player 6 -- there's an easy new solution for streaming video. Flash is continuing to grow in popularity online," says Phil Price, who heads Pelham, NY's Phil Price Digital Media. "With Flash MX, people are encoding video through the Flash .SWF file and playing it through Flash Player 6, so you don't need a streaming server" he points out. "You get around the [previous] high cost of streaming and get around the need to encode to all formats, too."

With the release of Flash MX, developers "can embed video more smoothly into an animated program with interactivity" Price adds. "The whole point of streaming is not to just watch the video -- the video is part of a whole interactive presentation."

MACROMEDIA FLASH MX

Macromedia Flash was originally developed by FutureWave and dubbed Future Splash Animator. "It was a drawing tool and you could create animations with it," recalls Troy Evans, Macromedia Flash Player product manager." We acquired FutureWave Software in 1996, renamed it Macromedia Flash and added interactivity and scripting. Now we've added video."

When Macromedia (www.macromedia.com) acquired Future Splash Animator's .SPL format, it received a new moniker: .SWF for Small Web Format Macromedia owns the Runtime player and distributes the .SWF format. "It's an open specification so a developer can publish to it with their authoring tools," Evans explains. Today some 40 to 50 tool vendors export to the SWF format.

In just a few years Macromedia Flash has become ubiquitous among computer users with Internet access. According to a March 2002 NPD Research study, 98.3 percent of all Web users have Flash 3 through 6 installed.

Macromedia introduced Macromedia Flash MX, the sixth iteration of the software, and its companion Macromedia Flash Player 6 on March 15. Designed to create Internet content and applications, Flash MX has powerful video, multimedia and application-development features which allow the creation of rich user interfaces, online advertising, e-learning courses and enterprise application front ends. With Flash MX, vector-based content and applications download faster than their bitmap equivalents. Streaming data content appears immediately without users having to wait for the entire piece to download.

Flash Player 6 is the first to incorporate a true video codec, Evans points out. "We partnered with Sorenson, which created the Spark codec for us based on the H.263 standard, a small and lightweight standard used in videoconferencing. Flash Player 6 has only a small footprint within the browser for a compelling application.

"With Flash MX, you can put video in a .SWF file on a Web server and stream over HTTP, so it's easy to deploy video content," he continues. "With Sorenson's Squeeze software, you can batch convert existing video files and output them as .SWF files integrated with your Flash movie."

Flash MX's rich media support includes import and manipulation of any standard video file; dynamic loading of JPEGs and MP3 files in Runtime; and high-fidelity audio support for MP3,ADPCM and more.

Although Flash MX and Flash Player 6 do not support live video content on the Web, Macromedia expects to release future products for this application, according to Evans. Additionally, Macromedia is "very committed to supporting the next generation of devices," he says. "Flash Player 5 already plays in Casio's Pocket PC 2002."

Flash Player 6 also features new accessibility required for government and institutional use. It implements the Microsoft Active Access Standard (MSAA) to allow screen readers such as Window Eyes to read With Adobe's LiveMotion2, users can employ the tools in After Effects and output to Flash. out the content for the visually impaired. "We want to keep evolving that," Evans says.

SORENSON'S SQUEEZE

With its reputation for high-quality video compression already firmly established, Sorenson was Macromedia's choice to provide the video capabilities for Flash MX. "High-end compression for quality video is what we do best," says Sorenson VP of marketing and sales Ed McGarr. "We have licensed proprietary codecs to Apple for QuickTime 3,4 and 5."

After about a year of discussions with Macromedia, Sorenson licensed its Spark codec to the company. Spark is included in the Flash MX authoring tool for basic video encoding and compression; the Spark decoder is included in Flash Player 6. Sorenson also offers developers an upsell to Squeeze for Flash MX, which includes the Spark Professional version of the codec, a Variable Bit Rate (VBR) compression application. The advanced features in Squeeze with Spark Pro enable users to create high-quality video at much smaller file sizes than the standard Spark available in Flash MX.

McGarr acknowledges that "we're somewhat dependent on the adoption rate of Flash MX for the upsell to Squeeze" but is confident that once people "wet their whistles" with the Flash MX authoring tool they'll crave even more capabilities available through Squeeze. "When you import video in Flash MX to do basic compression, a hot link to Sorenson Spark Pro comes up which shows its benefrts," he explains.