Flash Video

Videos in Easy Steps

Step 5: Flash Video

Flash technology has been around for several years, but as the technology has grown, new features have been introduced. Flash Video is one of those technologies that touches most computer users.

Almost everyone with a computer, a browser and an internet connection can use Flash and most computers come with Flash already installed. Here are several reasons why this is so.

* FLASH is already a cross platform technology meaning it will play on Mac, Linux and PCs. Your videos will play on approximately 98% of all computers.

* FLASH is widely accepted as the #1 way to deliver multimedia content online because it’s versatile, easy to use and bandwidth friendly.

* The technology will play the videos from any server. That means no special hosting account is required. You just upload to your server, and you’re done.

* The video quality is very clear and easy to see, it’s almost DVD like quality.

* You can create your own interactive media content with graphics, animations, etc. You can even create your own media player with custom controls.

* Flash videos load very fast and start quickly compared to other types of videos, this ensures your visitors don’t leave your website because they got tired of waiting.

On the downside:

* Flash is a relatively complex format. Beginners will find that it takes longer to learn than other formats.

* Flash is relatively expensive. To have full creative control you need to invest at least a few hundred dollars in software.

However for our needs we don’t want to be Flash programmers, we just want to use technology for our site visitors to view our videos.

FLV (Flash Video File) conversion or encoder software convert other video formats such as .avi, .mpg or .wmv into the flash format. This is really all that we need to understand for preparing our videos for using on our website.

There are several video encoder or video conversion programs available, from free to $150. We will be trying several of them in the future and will be posting our results.

Basically the programs have a few settings where you can change the Color Mode, the Sample/Playback/Bit Rate and the Keyframe Rate. You can select the size of the video window, read the article on bandwidth. You can select if the video will run when the page opens or starts when selected. Also select how much of the video prelods before it starts playing, 10% is normal.

Finally you should, depending on your program, be able to select the style of the player that will appear on your website when the file is played.

One key feature which is a must have is a redirect function so that at the end of the video your viewers can be redirected to another site, for example the sales page for an affiliate program that you are promoting.

If you are a WordPress user, and I sincerely hope you are, read my guide to embedding Flash videos into WordPress by clicking Here