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

Post, June, 2002 by Christine Bunish

The benefits of Squeeze are many." We can give a one-third smaller file size," McGarr says. "Sorenson Vcast automated hosting services enable users to store any kind of files [Windows Media, Real, QuickTime] and with just a couple of mouse clicks deliver them worldwide over the Web, a process which has formerly been expensive and hard to do."

Squeeze supports two-pass VBR, which produces higher-quality video than standard compression while only adding slightly more processing time, It also offers intelligent presets, batch processing through Watch Folders, adjustable cropping, audio/video filters and video noise reduction.

Sorenson technical marketing manager Kari Bulkley, who helmed the beta program for Squeeze, reports that "people are shocked" to see that an uncompressed 218 MB video clip in the demo can be compressed to 400K "and it still maintains phenomenal quality."

The demo on the Sorenson Web site also shows "how easy it is to put video inside the MX application," he adds. As a result, "people who found barriers to putting video inside presentations are getting excited about using video."

McGarr says, "As the lights start to go on, where it makes sense people see that as an alternative choice to compressing for Windows Media, Real or QuickTime, they can compress just once and play the video everywhere. Flash Player 6 is being ported to all sorts of devices, and it plays on all browsers and platforms. The value is in the ubiquity of Flash."

He muses about whether Flash will become "a de facto standard in the light of the advent of MPEG-4. The dream of MPEG-4 has been that you compress once and it plays anywhere. But Macromedia may have stumbled on this first with Flash MX."

AVID'S FORMAT FLEXIBILITY

"The development community pushes what standards will be supported," notes Macromedia's Evans. "As more and more Flash content is integrated with video, we encourage developers to ask third parties if they support Flash."

Avid Technology, Inc. (www.avid.com) has a longtime commitment to format flexibility. "Most video content is authored in Avid, and there are a number of ways to output it," notes senior product marketing manager Matt Allard. "We have connections to all paths, the ability to go to third-party products freely. It's easy for Avid to operate as a content provider for Flash developers on the video side. It's a natural extension of what we've been doing for years."

Avid has supported Sorenson's Spark codec since its introduction. With the purchase of the codec, Avid users can take immediate advantage of Flash MX, which will take a project created on an Avid Media Composer, Xpress DV or DS system and turn it into a Spark stream for the Internet. "We can take standard video types -- MPEG, DV, QuickTime, AVI files -- and incorporate them directly into Flash," Allard points out.

But Avid has gone beyond simple Flash output compatibility. At NAB Avid announced the MetaSync capability, designed to allow users to synchronize virtually any kind of metadata with video and audio during the post production process. MetaSync is a standard feature within Windows-based versions of Avid Symphony v.4.0, Media Composer v.11.0, Film Composer v. 1.0, Media Station XL v.11.0, Avid Xpress v.5.0 and NewsCutter v.3.0.