because it FORCES us dialup users to downlod the video. No choice but to downlaod. Unless we disconnect from the net, then it stops downloading.

Honestly, I don't know. I hate flash adds, flash movies on sites, etc. It's a pain in my but. But, it's fully intergrated into the web, not like a video file where it's just a video. They can do much more with flash.

Beacue it will play no matter whay and since pretty much everyone nowdays has flash player installed it will play period. Even with QT that majority of peps have too for some reason it comes with so many settings that either people change or ather applications change for them that you can never be sure it will play. On my website all video clips are encoded in QT according to teh standards apple's site uses to encode their trailers but still i get people telling me they can't see the clips... I'm seriosly thinking of moving to flash player as i did some tests and they play fine ALL the time.

Flash is on 90% of all PCs/Macs worldwide, far more than WM, Real or QT.

You can specify whether the video should start automatically when the page opens, or only on demand.

The latest generation of the Sorenson Flash codec looks much better than previous generations. If you're using Dreamweaver MX2004, get the free kit while you can (one more week).

For everybody else, there are other tools to create Flash videos for the web.

I loath Flash. It's like being force-fed something, whether you want it or not. And I hate Flash sites even more!

Jay

What about the actual quality vs bitrate for flv versus wmv? Anyone got examples/links?

Actually, using the Sorenson codec, it looks very good. I had some samples, but in my personal protest of Flash, I got rid of them.

Jay

Oh come on guys we all hate flash sites but when it comes "i want as many people as possble to see my projects online" flash is unbeatable.

Different things here.

"Flash sites" are those that use Flash instead of simple HTML, often to give you a 1-minute compulsory song-and-dance presentation of a company's offerings every time you go to their site, when all you want is their phone number. This is definitely a crime against nature.

The record for this category goes to a company called "Three Ring Circus". in Los Angeles. What was their business you might ask? Promotion of course. Now that you know the name of the company, their web site must be "www.threeringcircus.com", right? NO. The search engines at the time didn't have them listed, and they were too young to be in the phone book.

After a lot of headscratching and asking around, I finally found out that they were at www.ooocircus.com", ie. a play on the three rings.

Finally the correct address! What could possibly go wrong after that?

Well, their web site was created with the previous version of Flash, and in such a way that the then current version could not read it at all. The only way to access their web site was to uninstall Flash and pull an old version from the archives. Then you got to see the company's contact information in glorious Flash animation...

One Flash site that won a major award used HTML for everything except an animated ringing telephone in a customer service context.

Now, Flash video has nothing to do with any of the above. You can have a web site that is 100% HTML and use Flash only for on-demand video watching. It's ideal for short videos especially, because you don't have to sit and wait for the media player to load from disk.

If a visitor doesn't have Flash already (because he lives in Burkina-Faso and the laundromat owner hasn't installed Flash on his internet access computers yet), he is offered an automatic download and installation.

Hard to beat.

where do you get the flash integration with dw mx2004 you speak of course?

btw, flv via sorenson is amazing. i think flash integrated lightly with html sites are very attractive. total flash sites turn me off; bells and whistles are not informative.

b

Here's your Macromedia Video Kit:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/flashvideokit

Does the Sorenson flash codec plug into Vegas? Can I output flash video straight from the timeline?

I've experimented a bit with Flash and come to the following conclusions.

(1) Macromedia has done a much better job of making sure that most people can see Flash presentations on most operating systems than anybody else. You can put up a Flash presentation, and be assured that it will be viewable by everyone, even Linux users.

(2) The latest vesion of Flash Video (FLV) is almost as, but not quite as good as wm9, in terms of quality vs. bandwidth.

(3) Because it's everywhere, it is used more by abusive advertisers than other presentations systems.

(4) Macromedia has been very wise in allowing others to produce tools for Flash. As a result, Flash is the de facto standard.

(5) You can purchase Flash Video encoders for as low as $40.00

(6) It would be a good thing if Vegas could export directly to .flv

Travis
Travis Voiceover Services - www.Announcing.biz

People that "hate" Flash probably once upon a time hated graphics on web pages. They also probably hate frames, sounds, any kind of multimedia, etc. etc.... My view: Those that can do, those that can't bitch.

You can't please everybody. Years ago I had more fun then playing with a cage full of monkeys when taking the self-important group of self-appointed "experts" on all matters of HTML over in their little dark corner of Usenet. Now that was FUN and then some because after all their huffing and puffing I ran their sites through HTML validators and found that most of the "experts" didn't have a clue about web anything. Typical.

Flash is popular because of what you can do with it and it is very widely supported. Flash is the future. Plain old boring HTML only sites are on the past. Thankfully.

I use ONLY use flash on my site.

Check it out if you like. They are Virtual VideoTours of homes for sale.

http://www.videolistings.ca

I'm about to start buiding a site too and you BET I'm gonna use Flash with Sorenson Squeeze. Why? Because the quality is very good for smaller files and almost everybody's got the Flash player installed in their computer so these people don't need to install another player to view my files.
And I don't want to tinger with 7 different apps to come to an end.

Web sites are about *accessibility*, not "look I'm better than you" arguments.
And Flash, sorry, is the way to go now and I bet it's going to get even bigger. It's no more just an animation program, it's got much more "web dedicated" and going very fast in that direction.

Macromedia's done a tremendous job with this app.

The "Flash-haters" make me laugh. Soon they'll paint themselves into such a little corner of the web that they'll be like the Ammish people !

amish people make the best fudge. and all flash sights are annoying. I'm not the only person who hates sitting there for 20 minutes while the site loads just to find a phone number.

I don't like flash sites because my scroll mouse doesn't work on them. Also I don't like to press "enter" to get into the site once I'm already there.

However, the latest is Microsoft Avalon and Sparkle (said to be a "flash" killer) in the upcoming Longhorn O/S.

3D video and graphics built into the desktop and all the software.

I don't know what the future is but things can change in a heartbeat.

Regarding Flash sites vs. html sites, and overlooking stupid, personal attacks, I suggest any interested parties read this. I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions, to which you are entitled, although some here would have you think otherwise.

http://www.eduweb.com/to_flash_full.html

Jay

So how do we think video encoded with the Sorenson Squeeze 4.0 Lite included in the Macromedia Video Kit is going to look compared to Flash video created with Flash MX 2004 Pro (which I don't think uses Sorenson)?

Also, a bit worryingly, there are quite a lot of features missing from the Lite version of Sorenson Squeeze (including de-interlacing), as can be seen here:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/flashvideokit/sorenson_comparison.html

I'm a WMV9 man at the moment but this thread is changing my mind. Just not sure which of these 3 ways to go.

I think "flash hating" and "boring HTML" versus "Flash is the future" is very much a false dichotomy. For many, avoiding flash is about choosing standards and useability over a flash-in-the-pan design. Either can be good, bad or ugly. Personally, I've experienced more irritating Flash than irritating HTML.

If you haven't kept up with modern (last few years) HTML and CSS standards from W3C, you might be interested in perusing sites like , and http://www.schillmania.com/ to see what's possible without Flash.

Jason, thanks for sharing those sites! I especially liked the CSS Zen Garden. Just goes to show it's not the medium that is limited, but the individual's (designer's) imagination.

Jay

Flash MX 2004 Pro uses Sorenson.

The $50 to upgrade the Lite version of Squeeze to Pro may be money well spent.