OT - A drawback of Flash Video

Stonefield wrote on 7/20/2006, 10:02 PM
I've been watching the different formats used to present video on the web for a few years now and noticed the advantages and drawbacks of them. It seemed for a bit there that it was dominated either by Quicktime or Windows Media Video. ( Realplayer was a contender but they really make it difficult to watch their format - smart move, huh ? )

Then Flash video popped up, and until recently, it was not really comparable to QT or WMV. But it seems now that it's improved much even in the last 18 months. Perhaps Adobe buying Macromedia might have something to do with that.

I bring this up because one of the fun advantages of watching online videos like Metacafe, and YouTube, etc, was if you have a capable video card and some patience, there IS a way to switch any QT or WMV to display at full screen on your TV that's connected to your video card thru the video out terminal. And it isn't just mirroring a webpage on your TV display and pressing fullscreen. It's the actual video source displayed on your television monitor. Anyhoo...I always thought this was a great option. I'd spend lot's of time going thru the Apple Quicktime site watching trailers in full screen on my computer connected television.

Back to the Flash format, and that now seems to be an issue. When watching a webpage embedded with a Flash Video, it doesn't come up as a full screen video on your TV. I'm sure that has something to do ( unless I'm wrong here ) with Flash Video not using overlays. There is a fullscreen button on some embedded flash pages, but that IS just a mirror of what you see on the computer monitor if you were watching it there, transport controls and all.

Long winded post to explain a simple observation, but I'm wondering if Flash will have that cool functionality someday that both QT and WMV have. If not, it seems like a step back in the evolution of watching videos on the internet....

My thoughts....

Stan

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/20/2006, 10:28 PM
it's not a step back... it's copy protected. :D

if you save the flash file to your HD you can open it up in Media Player Classic & watch is that way. the down side is that it doesn't run all flash equally as well.

personally, I hate flash as a video format.
riredale wrote on 7/20/2006, 11:16 PM
I was Flash-agnostic until I switched the website I maintain for a local choir over to Flash from wmv last spring for the half-dozen or so video clips that show their various tours. Before, maybe a third of the users had problems getting their PC video player configured to show the wmv clips properly, and the Firefox browser wouldn't preload the embedded video properly at all (this was Firefox's fault, not Microsoft's, but that's just how it was). With Flash, setup is either not necessary at all or is a trivial download. Not a single complaint.

The Flash8 video format (the one developed by On2) is not quite as efficient as wmv, but it's close enough. The embedded freeware Flash player I use is elegant, simple, and bullet-proof.
TeetimeNC wrote on 7/21/2006, 4:58 AM
Here's another Flash problem I've had. I post widescreen WMVs (e.g., 500x276 square pixels) to Vimeo video hosting service. They automatically convert everything to Flash. The converted video always displays 4/3 in the flash player. Not sure this this is a Flash problem, or a problem with Vimeo's conversion. Fortunately, Vimeo also makes the original wmv available to visitors to the site.

Jerry
Paul_Holmes wrote on 7/21/2006, 5:28 AM
My Space also converts it to flash, but at least they do display 16X9 as 16X9 in a 4X3 window.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/21/2006, 6:39 AM
flash video is a dialup'ers worst nightmare. unlike other video formats, you can't stop the download of a flash video. this means adds,movies, etc. that are in flash on a webpage keep getting downloaded until eighter a) they're done or b) you switch ip's.

that's real annoying.
riredale wrote on 7/21/2006, 8:26 AM
Friar:
In my very limited understanding of the Flash format, I believe there are two ways to show video with Flash: (1) embed it in a Flash object on a web page, and (2) stream it.

I have no experience with the embedded option, but would assume that it means that the Flash object insists on downloading all the elements of the Flash presentation.

On the other hand, a Flash viewer set up for streaming makes no download demands until the user tells it to show the video. This was a major factor in my switch to Flash over wmv--Firefox insisted on downloading the entire wmv video clip for a web page before finishing the loading of that page.

From what I can tell, building sophisticated Flash presentations is an art form all in itself. You go to the home pages of most corporations, and there's a fancy Flash intro to the company. Hopefully, the designers include a little "turn Flash off" switch on the page so dial-uppers don't have to wait forever.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/21/2006, 10:53 AM
all flash adds don't give you the choice of not viewing them & sites like youtube automaticly start playing. For a WMV/MOV/AVI, etc. I'd just stop the page, right click, view page info & download the video manually. That's near impossible with flash.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/24/2006, 7:42 AM

I have to agree with the good Friar. As of yet, I have seen no advantage to Flash whatsoever. I loath going to a site to gather information only to be forced to wait for some Flash file to load, and 99 times out of 100 it was ill-conceived and contributes little or nothing to the site.

And I really hate web sites done in Flash!


seanfl wrote on 7/25/2006, 7:59 AM
Hi Riredale

Can you point me to what freeware embedded player you utilize? I'm working on a new web project and have found some nice players different places.

http://www.cowfly.com/products.htm is one example

I'm always looking for one that's been tested and works well.

For showcasing video, it seems that flash is an excellent technology, and I agree with the above comments about ease of use, and it just works. There must be some reason youtube went with flash.

When I was using .wmv or some other formats, there were always people that couldn't play from the web. With flash, it just seems to work and I don't get people saying "I can't play your samples."

I wish Vegas would do an agreement with on2 so we could export .swf's right from Vegas...that would save a bunch of time.

When I was researching what format to use a year ago, it seemed flash 8 was most efficient (quality vs. size of file). Maybe I didn't search enough.

PS, Jay don't visit my site. :)


Sean
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broadcast voiceovers
riredale wrote on 7/25/2006, 8:25 AM
Sean, here is an example of Flash on the choir website that I maintain. It's a free player available here. I am kinda slow on the uptake and it took me a long time to understand how to install it. Some of the discussion I had on the message board over at SiteSpinner (the website authoring tool I used) is over here.

This particular Flash player is showing up all over the web--I've seen it on 3 or 4 other significant sites in the past few months. The guy also has a Flash audio player that is basically just the control bar portion of the video player. I use that player to play the intro song on the home page of the choir website (it's hidden on that page).

The video clips on the website were encoded at about 250-300Kb/sec. I have been very frustrated with the website host, as the videos will download quickly some days and very slowly on other days. It's supposed to be a 1/4 T1 service, but I think they're screwing up somewhere.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 7/25/2006, 8:32 AM

Sean, I won't have to, you sent me a DVD!