Video in Flash

Although video is discussed on more than one occasion throughout this book, it is important to note a major improvement for video in Flashthe alpha channel.

Now Flash can import, convert to FLV, and play back video with an alpha channel, allowing developers and designers to quickly add video to their Flash content and still be able to see what is behind the video.

As you can see in Figures 1.11 and 1.12, both use the same video, yet have different backgrounds. This was easily done because the video itself has the background taken out.

Figure 1.11. You can see the woman walking in front of platform 9 3/4.

Figure 1.12. This time, the woman is walking in front of a text field, with highlighted text, which means the user is interacting with it as the video plays.

Again, video is covered in more detail in Chapter 6, "Working with Sound and Video," and Chapter 26, "Streaming Media."

Do not think ActionScript was forgotten; there are several new Object classes, and we will go over a few of them. But for more information on the new objects, check out the reference section at the end of the book.