Digital Video Solutions: The Case for Flash Video
Question: I’ve been reading a lot recently (including in Layers magazine) about rich media and its adoption as the “next big thing.” Usually, the article makes some mention of Flash Video as the type of video you want to add to your website. It wasn’t that long ago that I was compressing my video for the Web with the Sorenson codec! Then I felt pressure to switch to MPEG-4 because everyone started saying that podcasting was the best video distribution method. Why should my company now invest in Flash Video?
Answer: Great question! And if it makes you feel any better, there are a lot of other people asking themselves the exact same question these days. You’re also correct that the buzz phrase of the year is definitely rich media (and Adobe is spending millions to keep it buzzing). But the buzz didn’t start because of some slick marketing campaign. It started because individuals and companies adopted rich media by the hundreds of thousands.
Let’s start by defining a couple of the key terms that you mentioned in your question. First, rich media is the term used to describe a broad range of digital media (such as video, audio, and animation) that all work together to engage the user with dynamic motion. It was originally coined by Suzanne Brisendine (who was working as the Internet evangelist for Intel at the time) to describe a broad range of digital interactive media.
Second, Flash Video (FLV) is one of the many technologies that makes up a part of the rich media universe. FLV is a file format used to deliver video over the Internet to the Adobe Flash Player. FLV content may also be embedded within SWF files. Notable users of the FLV format include Google Video, Reuters.com, and YouTube.
Since you specifically ask about Flash Video, let me see if I can make the case for why you would want to consider switching to FLV for your streaming media needs.
1. Flash Player is everywhere
According to an April 2006 NPD Research survey (www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer), the Adobe Flash Player is installed on 97.7% of all Internet-enabled desktops worldwide. That’s more than Java, Adobe’s own Acrobat Reader, Apple’s QuickTime Player, and even Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. If you want your video content accessible to the most people possible, across all computing platforms, FLV is the answer.
2. Encode once
Since FLV offers the most access to Web browsers and computing platforms, you only have to encode your video to one format. No longer do you have to encode videos in multiple formats for a wide range of media players, in multiple sizes, and for different bandwidth requirements. No longer do you have to buy and learn different production tools for each format (Windows, QuickTime, Real) and then troubleshoot each format’s playback quirks. No longer do you have to maintain multiple page versions with buggy JavaScript code or multiple-choice tests for your viewers to wade through. The money you save by freeing yourself from all of this redundancy alone is usually enough for a company to decide to make the switch.
3. Prevents stealing
According to Steve Wolkoff, Product Manager for Flash Media Server, the “Flash Media Server 2 includes a suite of secure streaming tools to keep your content protected. URLs are hidden in virtual directories and filenames are obscured in the SWF format. Audio/video content streamed to Flash Player using Flash Media Server is not cached locally. The proprietary RTMP protocol protects against stream ripping. New access controls in Flash Media Server allow for straightforward integration with back-end databases for user authentication.”
While nothing distributed to the public is ever 100% secure, FLV is definitely one of the harder formats to quickly copy to your drive. Add to that the fact that Flash Media servers support 128-bit SSL encryption for both incoming and outgoing streams, and you have one of the most secure video streaming platforms available.
Switching to Flash Video
If you decide to make the switch, the next question is usually something in the area of, “What do I do now?” Fortunately, Adobe is a big company with a lot of partners, so that gives you a lot of options in deciding what you want to do yourself and what you want someone else to do for you. From encoding to delivery to playback, everything can be set up to either do in-house or have outsourced altogether. For example, if you decide to encode all of your own content yourself, you can use encoding applications such as Flash Professional 8 (www.adobe.com), Sorenson Squeeze (www.sorensonmedia.com), Flix (www.on2.com), and numerous others to accomplish your goals.
If you decide to also deliver all of your own FLV files in-house, then you can use the Origin-Edge architecture in Flash Media Server 2 to develop and deliver large-scale video applications to the masses. However, most organizations will probably prefer to outsource their video delivery, and for this you have the Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS). The FVSS (www.adobe.com/products/flashcom/fvss) provides the most effective way to deliver FLV to the largest possible audience without the hassle of setting up and maintaining your own streaming server hardware and network. While there are a number content delivery network partners, the biggest ones are companies such as Akamai (www.akamai.com), Mirror Image (www.mirror-image.com), and VitalStream (www.vitalstream.com). Not only can you scale and grow globally this way but you also don’t have to worry about setting up or maintaining any server hardware.
Making the choice
No matter how many statistics or arguments that you hear or read, only you can decide if making the switch to Flash Video is worth it for you or your organization. If you have plenty of people enjoying your content in the format that it’s in, then you may not need to switch. But if any of the above arguments made sense and you see some new opportunities on the horizon, then maybe you should switch.
The ideal solution may even lie in a compromise between the two. For example, the Digital Video Professionals Association, the organization that I work for, has decided to continue to distribute all of its online training to its members in the QuickTime format that we’ve been using for years—mainly because the application for this is already built and it’s the preferred format of our partners. However, all new video that we create for the public side of our website will be in the FLV format so that we can reach the maximum number of new prospects for membership. As for the future, we’re hoping to get away from the idea of “TV on the Web” and use FLV as the cornerstone for amazing new applications that are engaging, interactive, responsive, and create an overall exciting experience that meets our customers’ needs. In the end, isn’t that what digital media on the Web should be?
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