get ready for a technical one titled: "FLASH MX 2…

get ready for a technical one titled:

“FLASH MX 2004 & SORENSON SQUEEZE: A video Odyssey – volume 1″

i have been testing Macromedia Flash MX 2004 for it’s video importing & serving capabilities along with Sorenson Squeeze.

Background: Flash MX 2004 uses Sorenson Spark codec whenever you import a video source file and want to make it a .swf, in order to serve it through the Internet. Sorenson Squeeze uses the Pro edition of Spark.

CONCLUSION #1: better quality, smaller file sizes can be achieved using the later (Squeeze)

So, i prepared all my videos using Squeeze bearing in mind that dial-up connections should be served with low bit rate – small frame size videos.

Next step was to create an .fla containing a preloader that could provide feedback on the % of the video loaded to the user who waits…. Wishful thinking….Each and every video-swf made with Squeeze seemed to serve itself in a streaming kind of way. What happened?

Whenever i simulated download (ctrl+enter) preloader started and at 2-3% the movie appeared, freezed for 2-3 seconds, then started playing, then freezed again….The preloader was rendered useless as you can imagine…

Of course, when i decided to serve the movie-swf on it’s own everything was ok: a flash movie that appeared to stream over the Web…

CONCLUSION #2: (maybe i should) turn to .FLV video solution…

TO BE CONTINUED >