Hour 18. Using Video

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• How to import and use video in movies

• How to build scripted controls to play videos

• How to optimize for high quality and low file size

• How to use cue points to synchronize a video to the graphics in your Flash movie

In the not-too-distant past, it was impossible to display video inside of Flash without something short of a miracle. The video support in Flash 8 has really come of age. You can import video, trim it, and compress it, using the state-of-the-art VP6 codec from On2 that keeps files small and quality high. Even though most of the technical details are handled automatically, you're given enough control to vary the results greatly. If you want the best quality and most features, you need to use Flash Professional 8. There are a few workarounds that you can take if you only have Flash Basic 8 but, in short, Flash Basic 8 falls flat if you want to do video.

Codec is short for compressor/decompressor. Basically, videos need to be compressed so they download quickly. The same video needs to be decompressed for the user to view it. Many different technologies are available to compress and decompress. The codec that Flash Basic uses is called Spark (from Sorenson) while Flash Professional 8 also includes VP6 (from On2).