Playing back external FLV files dynamically

An alternative to importing video into the Flash authoring environment it to 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.

Create FLV files by importing video into the Flash authoring tool and exporting it as an FLV file. If you have Macromedia Flash Professional 8 or Flash CS3 Professional, you can use the FLV Export plug-in to export FLV files from supported video-editing applications.

To play back an external FLV file, 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 the following capabilities that are not available when using imported video:

• You can use longer video clips 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 Adobe Flash or “Basics of video” in Programming ActionScript 3.0.