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Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g.,
TV show A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed bet ...
s,
movie A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
s, etc.) over the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
using
Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the ...
version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the
ISO base media file format The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and wa ...
, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by
Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...
. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video (over RTMP). Users include Hulu,
VEVO Vevo ( , an abbreviation for "Video Evolution", stylized as VEVO until 2013) is an American multinational video hosting service, best known for providing music videos to YouTube. The service is also available as an app on selected smart TVs, ...
, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers. Flash Video FLV files usually contain material encoded with
codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...
s following the Sorenson Spark or VP6
video compression format A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content (such as in a data file or bitstream). It typically uses a standardized video compression al ...
s. public releases of Flash Player (collaboration between Adobe Systems and MainConcept) also support
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
video and HE-AAC audio. All of these compression formats are restricted by patents. Flash Video is viewable on most operating systems via the Adobe Flash Player and
web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
plugin or one of several third-party programs. Apple's
iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
devices, along with almost all other mobile devices, do not support the Flash Player plugin and so require other delivery methods such as provided by the Adobe Flash Media Server.


History

The 2002 release of Flash Player 6 added support for video in the SWF file format. The 2003 release of Flash Player 7 added direct support for the FLV file format. Because of restrictions in the FLV file format, Adobe Systems created new file formats in 2007, based on the
ISO base media file format The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and wa ...
(MPEG-4 Part 12). In this way, the F4V format shares a common base with the MP4 format, which is why F4V is sometimes informally called "Flash MP4". Flash Player does not check the filename extension but instead examines the file to determine the format of the thing created.Kaourantin.net (31 October 2007) Tinic Ur
New File Extensions and MIME Types
, Retrieved on 2009-08-03
The new file formats are very different from the older FLV file format. For example, F4V does not support Screen video, Sorenson Spark, VP6 video compression formats and ADPCM, or Nellymoser audio compression formats. Authors of Flash Player strongly encourage use of the new standard file format F4V (ISO base media file format) because it overcomes functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264 or AAC, which is one reason Adobe Systems is moving away from the older FLV file structure. Since 2002, the initial format is Flash Video and the file suffix is .flv with a MIME derived Internet media type of video/x-flv. The Adobe-branded file suffix .f4v was extended from 2007 to support the
ISO base media file format The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and wa ...
using the same MIME derived Internet media type of video/mp4 as the Apple file suffix of .m4v and the general file suffix of .mp4. Adobe-branded file suffixes exist for .f4p which relates to media encrypted with their Adobe Access DRM scheme; .f4a and .f4b relate respectively to .m4a and .m4b with the same MIME derived Internet media type of audio/mp4. SWF files published for Flash Player 6 and later versions are able to exchange audio, video, and data over RTMP connections with the Adobe Flash Media Server. One way to feed data to Flash Media Server is from files in the FLV file format. Flash Player can play SWF files created for Flash Player 7 and later versions in FLV format directly (MIME type video/x-flv). Flash Player can also play the new F4V file format, beginning with SWF files created for Flash Player 9 Update 3. Use of the H.264 compression format in the FLV file format has some limitations so authors of Flash Player strongly encourage use of the new standard F4V file format.


Encoding

Commonly, Flash Video FLV files contain video bit streams which are a proprietary variant of the H.263 video standard, under the name of Sorenson Spark (
FourCC A FourCC ("four-character code") is a sequence of four bytes (typically ASCII) used to uniquely identify data formats. It originated from the OSType or ResType metadata system used in classic Mac OS and was adopted for the Amiga/Electronic Arts I ...
FLV1). Sorenson Spark is an older codec for FLV files but it is also a widely available and compatible one, because it was the first video codec supported in Flash Player. It is the required video compression format for Flash Player 6 and 7.Adobe LiveDocs (2005
Flash 8 Documentation – About the On2 VP6 and Sorenson Spark video codecs
, Retrieved on 2009-08-09
Flash Player 8 and newer revisions also support the playback of On2 TrueMotion VP6 video bit streams (FourCC VP6F or FLV4). On2 VP6 is the preferred video compression format for use with Flash Player 8 and higher.Adob
Flash CS4 Professional Documentation – Digital video and Flash
Retrieved on 2009-08-09
On2 VP6 can provide a higher visual quality than Sorenson Spark, especially when using lower bit rates. On the other hand, it is computationally more complex and therefore will not run as well on certain older system configurations. The Flash Video FLV file format supports two versions of a so-called 'screenshare' (Screen video) codec which is an encoding format designed for screencasts. Both these formats are bitmap tile based, can be
lossy In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...
by reducing color depths and are compressed using zlib. The second version is only playable in Flash Player 8 and newer. Audio in Flash Video files is usually encoded as MP3. However, audio in Flash Video FLV files recorded from the user's microphone use the proprietary
Nellymoser Asao Codec Asao (also known as Nellymoser audio codec) is a proprietary single-channel (mono) codec and compression format optimized for low-bitrate transmission of audio, developed by Nellymoser Inc. Technical Details Sound data is grouped into frames o ...
.MultimediaWik
Nelly Moser
Retrieved on 2009-08-11
(Flash Player 10 released in 2008 also supports the open source
Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntro ...
codec.) FLV files also support uncompressed audio or
ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...
format audio. Recent versions of Flash Player 9 support AAC ( HE-AAC/ AAC SBR, AAC Main Profile, and AAC-LC). Support for encoding Flash Video files is provided by an encoding tool included with Adobe's Flash Professional and Creative Suite products, On2's Flix encoding tools,
Sorenson Squeeze Sorenson Squeeze was a software video encoding tool used to compress and convert video and audio files on Mac OS X or Windows operating systems. It was sold as a standalone tool and has also long been bundled with Avid Media Composer. History S ...
,
FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...
and other third-party tools.


Media type support

Supported media types in both the Flash Video and ISO base media file formats: *Video **
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
(added to MP4 and FLV) ** unofficial Google GPL FLV implementations for Android *** MPEG-4 ASP (native to MP4) *** ITU H.263 (native to 3GPP MP4) *Audio ** MPEG layer 3 (native to Flash Video) ** MPEG AAC (added to Flash Video) Supported media types in just the Flash Video file format: *General video **RGB (supported by same type code SWF uses) ** run-length (supported by same type code SWF uses) ** Sorenson's H.263 (native to Flash Video) **On2 TrueMotion VP6 with and without alpha channel (added to Flash Video) *Animated video are the zlib based Screen 1 and 2 (native to SWF). *General audio are PCM and
ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...
(native to SWF). *Vocal audio **Nellymoser's Asao @ 16 or 8 or 5 kHz (native to SWF) **
a-law An A-law algorithm is a standard companding algorithm, used in European 8-bit PCM digital communications systems to optimize, i.e. modify, the dynamic range of an analog signal for digitizing. It is one of two versions of the G.711 standar ...
and μ-law (native to SWF) **
Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntro ...
(added to FLV) *
Timed text Timed text is the presentation of text media in synchrony with other media, such as audio and video. Applications Typical applications of timed text are the real-time subtitling of foreign-language movies on the Web, captioning for people lack ...
requires ActionScript specific commands for loading captioning, which is only supported by external text files in either JSON or W3C
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
formats. Supported media types in just the ISO base media file format: *Animated video are QuickTime types for GIF, PNG and JPEG, which replace the Screen 1 and 2 encodings. *
Timed text Timed text is the presentation of text media in synchrony with other media, such as audio and video. Applications Typical applications of timed text are the real-time subtitling of foreign-language movies on the Web, captioning for people lack ...
requires ActionScript specific commands for loading captions embedded as either
EIA-608 EIA-608, also known as "line 21 captions" and "CEA-608", was once the standard for closed captioning for NTSC TV broadcasts in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It was developed by the Electronic Industries Alliance and required by law to be ...
or QuickTime mac based styled text with the 3GPP derived version that supports
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
.


FLV converters

An FLV converter is a type of video conversion software that is used for turning videos from different formats into FLV. Below is a list of popular free video converters which support conversion to FLV. * SUPER (freeware) * Free Studio (freeware) * Freemake Video Converter (freeware) * Format Factory (freeware) * HandBrake Video Converter (
GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
-licensed free software) * VLC Video Player (
GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
-licensed free software) * Any Video Converter (freeware and commercial) *
FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...
(
GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...
-licensed free software) * Easy 7-Zip (7z)-Via Extraction of Audios (MP3) and Videos (no audio) These programs run under Microsoft Windows. HandBrake, FFmpeg and VLC also run under
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
.


Flash Video Structure


Header

FLV files start with a standard header which is shown below:Open Source Flash (2011) Flash Video (FLV) nlineAvailable from (link already dead): http://osflash.org/flv#flv_format


Packets

After the header, the file is split into packets called "FLV tags", which have 15-byte packet headers. The first four bytes denote the size of the previous packet/tag (including the header without the first field), and aid in seeking backward. The ''Packet Type'' byte of a packet/tag header is based on the RTMP message ID byte with the AMF metadata value of 18 (0x12), video payload value of 9 (0x09) and audio payload value of 8 (0x08) being the only valid types used. The third bit indicates the payload is encrypted using the same mechanism as RTMP uses, however this is rarely used due to encrypted transports such as RTMP being used instead. The FLV packet encryption is generally inherited from a MP4 file that is stored on an Adobe Flash Media Server. *Packet types enumerated as 1 is a RTMP set packet size. *Packet types enumerated from 3 are RTMP bytes read report, RTMP ping, RTMP server bandwidth, RTMP client bandwidth. *Packet types enumerated from 8 are Audio payload, Video payload. *Packet types enumerated from 15 are RTMP flex stream send, RTMP flex shared object, RTMP flex message, AMF metadata, shared object, RTMP invoke. *Packet type enumerated as 24 is an encapsulated flash video. Following that, there are three bytes for the ''Payload Size'' denoting length of the ''Payload Data'', then four bytes for the ''Timestamp'' in milliseconds (with the last byte used to extend the first three bytes), the next 3 bytes for the ''Stream ID'' (incremented for multiple streams of the same type), and finally followed by the actual payload data. There is a direct relation between the fields encountered in an FLV Tag and those found in a RTMP packet, as for example the FLV Packet Type field uses the same numeric values as the RTMP Chunk Type field (ex. 0x08 for audio and 0x09 for video). FLV tags are thus converted into RTMP packets when the file is streamed through a Flash Media Server or equivalent RTMP Server. The first packet encountered is usually a metadata packet which contains information such as: * "duration" - 64-bit IEEE floating point value in seconds * "width" and "height" – 64-bit IEEE floating point value in pixels * "framerate" – 64-bit IEEE floating point value in frames per second * "keyframes" – an array with the positions of p-frames, needed when random access is sought. * ", AdditionalHeader" - an array of required stream decoding informational pairs ** "Encryption" - an array of required encryption informational pairs ** "Metadata" -
Base64 In computer programming, Base64 is a group of binary-to-text encoding schemes that represent binary data (more specifically, a sequence of 8-bit bytes) in sequences of 24 bits that can be represented by four 6-bit Base64 digits. Common to all bina ...
encoded string of a signed X.509 certificate containing the ''Adobe Access'' AES decryption key required When streamed using an
Actionscript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning ...
built player, the metadata values above are passed as arguments on the onMetaData callback function. Audio packets have the first byte of the payload defining the decoding details with the first four bits for the encoding used and the last four bits for the parameters required to process the encoding. Video packets have this order reversed. Video encodings enumerated from 0 are: Video processing parameters enumerated from 1 are: MPEG-4 encodings such as H.264, MPEG-4 ASP and AAC add a one byte value with a NULL value indicating that the payload contains MPEG-4 configuration details. MPEG-4 video encodings also add three bytes for ''composition timestamp offset'' which is required for encodings that use B-frames. Audio encodings enumerated from 0 are: Audio encodings enumerated from 10 are: Audio encodings enumerated from 14 are MPEG layer 3 8 kHz, Device specific such as
MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...
. Audio processing parameters with the first two bits for the sampling rate, next bit flags 16-bit sample size on with off indicating 8-bit sample size, and the final bit flags stereophonic channels on with off indicating monaural only. Sampling rates enumerated from 0 are 5.5 kHz, 11.025 kHz quarter, 22.05 kHz half, 44.1 kHz full. Encrypted packets have an additional 31 or 24 byte header before the AES-CBC encrypted payload as follows:


FLV players

An FLV player is a type of media player that is used for playing Flash video from PC as well as from Internet websites. An FLV player can be used standalone, without the need of the Adobe Flash authoring or developmental tools. It can also be embedded in the website using Flash component or embeddable version of FLV player. Adobe Flash Player is a multimedia and application player originally developed by
Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...
and acquired by Adobe Systems. It plays SWF files, which can be created by Adobe Flash Professional, Apache Flex, or a number of other Adobe Systems and 3rd party tools. It has support for a scripting language called
ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning ...
, which can be used to display Flash Video from an SWF file. Because the Flash Player runs as a browser plug-in, it is possible to embed Flash Video in web pages and view the video within a web browser. Flash Player supported display of Flash Video files since version 6, with the Sorenson Spark and On VP6 video codecs. Support was recently added for
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
video content as well.


H.264

Flash Player 9 Update 3, released on 3 December 2007, also includes support for the new Flash Video file format F4V and
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
video standard (also known as MPEG-4 part 10, or AVC) which is even more computationally demanding, but offers significantly better quality/bitrate ratio. Specifically, Flash Player now supports video compressed in H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using AAC (MPEG-4 Part 3), the F4V, MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia container formats, 3GPP Timed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store metadata.
MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/ IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine ...
video (e.g. created with DivX or Xvid) is not supported. In an interview with
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
, the main programmer of Flash
Jonathan Gay Jonathan Gay (born 1967) is an American computer programmer and software entrepreneur based in Northern California. Gay co-founded FutureWave Software in 1993. For a decade, he was the main programmer and visionary of Flash, an animation editor ...
said that the company had wanted to use H.264 when video support was originally added to Flash, but had been deterred by the patent licensing fees of around $5 million (£3.5 million) per year.


Playback

Flash Player supports two distinct modes of video playback: *Software Rendered Video : Flash Player supports software rendered video since version 6. Such video supports vector animations displayed above the video content. Such content is typically rendered using software decoding. *Hardware Accelerated Video : Flash Player supports hardware accelerated video playback since version 10.2, for
H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
, F4V, and FLV video formats. Such video is displayed above all Flash content, and takes advantage of
video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...
chipsets installed on the user's device. Developers must specifically use the "StageVideo" technology within Flash Player in order for hardware decoding to be enabled. Flash Player internally uses technologies such as
DirectX Video Acceleration DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion ...
and OpenGL to do so.


Desktop-based

Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Unix-based * Adobe Media Player (freeware) (no longer published or supported by Adobe) *
Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...
(free software) *
MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS using ...
(free software) *
RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3 ...
(freeware) *
VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...
(free software) *
Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...
(freeware) Mac OS devices can play flash videos in QuickTime with the help of additional software (such as the open source
Perian Perian is a discontinued open-source QuickTime component that enabled Apple Inc.’s QuickTime to play several popular video formats not supported natively by QuickTime on macOS. It was a joint development of several earlier open source component ...
component.)


PDA-based and smartphone-based

Windows Mobile, Palm OS–based *
The Core Pocket Media Player The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is a software media player which operates on portable devices and Microsoft Windows, Windows-based PCs. It is discontinued, but still available from the official mirror site. Supported operating systems incl ...
(open source software) The iPhone and Android devices can play flash videos with the help of additional software (such as the Skyfire web browser application.) Apple iOS has never supported Flash. Android versions above 2.1 through 4.0 supported Flash; Adobe has discontinued Flash Player for Android. On 29 June 2012, Adobe announced that, as they were discontinuing development of the mobile version of Flash, they would prevent the Flash player from installing from the Google Play Store on any Android devices that do not already have the Flash player installed, and that they would not be releasing a version of Flash certified for use with Android version 4.1, codenamed
Jelly Bean Jelly beans are small bean shaped sugar candies with soft candy shells and thick gel interiors (see gelatin and jelly). The confection is primarily made of sugar and sold in a wide variety of colors and flavors. History It has been clai ...
.


Delivery options

Flash Video files can be delivered in several different ways: * As a standalone .FLV file. Although Flash Video files are normally delivered using a Flash player for control, the .FLV file itself is only playable with an FLV player. There are several third party players available. * Embedded in an SWF file using the Flash authoring tool (supported in Flash Player 6 and later). The entire file must be transferred before playback can begin. Changing the video requires rebuilding the SWF file. *
Progressive download A progressive download is the transfer of digital media files from a server to a client, typically using the HTTP protocol when initiated from a computer. The consumer may begin playback of the media before the download is complete. The key differen ...
via
HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
(supported in Flash Player 7 and later). This method uses
ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning ...
to include an externally hosted Flash Video file client-side for playback.
Progressive download A progressive download is the transfer of digital media files from a server to a client, typically using the HTTP protocol when initiated from a computer. The consumer may begin playback of the media before the download is complete. The key differen ...
has several advantages, including buffering, use of generic HTTP servers, and the ability to reuse a single SWF player for multiple Flash Video sources. Flash Player 8 includes support for random access within video files using the partial download functionality of HTTP, sometimes this is referred to as streaming. However, unlike streaming using RTMP, HTTP "streaming" does not support real-time broadcasting. Streaming via HTTP requires a custom player and the injection of specific Flash Video metadata containing the exact starting position in bytes and timecode of each keyframe. Using this specific information, a custom Flash Video player can request any part of the Flash Video file starting at a specified keyframe. For example,
Google Video Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other website ...
, YouTube, and Bitgravity support progressive downloading and can seek to any part of the video before buffering is complete. * Streamed via RTMP to the Flash Player using the Flash Media Server (formerly called Flash Communication Server), free C++ RTMP Server, VCS, ElectroServer,
Helix Universal Server The Helix Universal Media Server was a product developed by RealNetworks and originates from the first streaming media server originally developed by Progressive Networks in 1994. It supported a variety of streaming media delivery transports inc ...
,
Wowza Media Server Wowza Streaming Engine (known as Wowza Media Server prior to version 4) is a unified streaming media server software developed by Wowza. The server is used for streaming of live and on-demand video, audio, and rich Internet applications over I ...
, Unified Streaming Platform WebORB for .NET, WebORB for Java, erlyvideo (in erlang), or the open source Red5 server. As of April 2008, there are stream recorders available for this protocol, re-encoding screencast software excluded. * Flash Media Server 4.5 allows Flash video streaming to iPhones and
iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
s. It achieves this by delivering the content in an MPEG-2 stream using the
HTTP Live Streaming HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS) is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and ...
format.Apple iPads and iPhones finally get Flash video
9 September 2011. Retrieved 10 September 2011.


Flash video recording

It is possible to record online flash videos using stream recorders and screen video capture software. The former gives lossless results, while the latter allows recording any video even when anti- leeching measures are used.


See also

*
Local Shared Object A local shared object (LSO), commonly called a Flash cookie (due to its similarity with an HTTP cookie), is a piece of data that websites that use Adobe Flash may store on a user's computer. Local shared objects have been used by all versions of ...
*
SWFObject SWFObject (originally FlashObject) is an open-source JavaScript library used to embed Adobe Flash content onto Web pages and to protect the flash game against piracy, which is supplied as one small JavaScript file. The library can also detect the ...


References


External links


Flash Developer Center – Flash Video Articles

Flash Video (FLV) File Format Specification
(adobe.com)

versions from 6 to 9 (adobe.com)
Macromedia Flash FLV Video File Format
(Library of Congress) {{Media player (application software) Adobe Flash Digital container formats