About Playing Back External Flv Files Dynamically - MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH Use Manual

About playing back external FLV files
dynamically
As an alternative to importing video into the Flash authoring environment, you can use either
the FLVPlayback component or ActionScript to dynamically play external FLV files in Flash
Player. You can play FLV files posted as HTTP downloads or as local media files.
You can create FLV files by importing video into the Flash authoring tool and exporting it as
an FLV file. For information on exporting video as an FLV file, see
(FLV)" on page 506. If you have Macromedia Flash Professional 8, you can use the FLV
Export plug-in to export FLV files from supported video-editing applications. For more
information, see "About encoding video" on page
To play back an external FLV file, you must post an FLV file to a URL (either an HTTP site
or a local folder) and add either the FLVPlayback component or ActionScript code to the
Flash document to access the file and control playback during runtime.
Using external FLV files provides certain capabilities that are not available when using
imported video, as described in the following list:
You can use longer video clips in your Flash documents without slowing down playback.
External FLV files are played using cached memory, which means that large files are stored
in small pieces and accessed dynamically; they do not require as much memory as
embedded video files.
An external FLV file can have a different frame rate from the Flash document in which it
plays. For example, you can set the Flash document frame rate to 30 fps and the video
frame rate to 21 fps, which gives you greater control in ensuring smooth video playback.
With external FLV files, Flash document playback does not have to be interrupted while
the video file is loading. Imported video files can sometimes interrupt document playback
to perform certain functions (for example, to access a CD-ROM drive). FLV files can
perform functions independently of the Flash document, and so do not interrupt
playback.
Captioning video content is easier with external FLV files because you can use callback
functions to access metadata for the video.
For more information on playing back FLV files, see "Playing back external FLV files
dynamically" in Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash.
300 Working with Video
"Macromedia Flash Video
281.