Installation guide

Benets of streaming versus HTTP delivery
erearethreemethodsfordeliveringvideoovertheInternetusingAdobeFlashPlayer:
• Embeddedvideo
• Progressivedownload
• Streaming
Embeddedvideoisrarelyusedexceptinveryspecializedapplicationswithlow-quality,short
video clips, so our discussion will focus on progressive download and streaming.
Inbothprogressiveandstreamingdelivery,thevideocontentisexternaltotheSWFle.To
deploy video content to the web, the SWF le and the video le would be uploaded to a server.
Keeping the video external and separate oers a number of benets over the embedded video
method, including:
• Easytoupdate—Accommodatesdynamiccontentandit’srelativelyeasytoaddorchange
content independent of the video player and without the need to republish the SWF le.
• SmallSWFlesize—YourSWFlecanremainverysmallforfasterpageloading,allowingthe
video to be delivered when the user requests it.
• Betterperformance—BecausetheFLVandSWFlesareseparate,theuserwillhaveabetter
playback experience.
Note: Although this section focuses on the delivery of video les, the same methods can be used to deliver
audio les. In other words, audio les can also be embedded, progressively downloaded, or streamed.
Progressive download video delivery
SinceFlashMX2004,progressivedownloadhasbeensupportedforvideodelivery.ismethod
allows developers to load external video les into a Flash or Flex interface and play them back
duringruntime.iscanbeaccomplishedusingActionScriptcommandswiththeVideoobject
or playback components, or by setting parameters for the playback components in the authoring
environment(asshowninthefollowinggure).
Parameters set for an FLVPlayback component to stream an external video le into a SWF
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