[flashpro] Best practice for creating FLV video files

[Stevio]

I have been working on creating my first Flash video for a web site using 
FLV files. I have some questions as to what is best practice.

On2 or Sorenson / Flash 8 or 7?
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The On2 video codec creates a much better quality video than the Sorenson 
Spark codec. However, this can only be used on browsers with the Flash 8 
player installed. I emailed a group of people asking them to check out a 
video and only a small number had the Flash 8 player or went to the bother 
of installing it.

Should I therefore code my video for Flash player 7 (or less) by using 
Sorenson?

If so, I have another question - when I coded the video using Sorenson for 
Flash player 7, and then created the SWF file in Flash and set the Publish 
settings for Flash Player 7 version and hit Publish, I get a warning saying 
that this movie uses features that are not supported in Flash Player version 
7:

"Scene=Scene 1, layer=Layer 1, frame=1:The component 'FLVPlayback' requires 
Flash Player 8 or later."

How can that be if I have coded it using Sorenson?

Do you recommend I use On2 Codec and just put a note on the web page to tell 
people they can safely install Flash Player 8? Or code for version 7? Or do 
both and use a detection method to play the appropriate one (would rather 
not use that option)?

What are you doing for your FLV videos?


File sizes/quality/download rates
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My video is approx. 310 seconds long. Do I need to worry about the final 
size of the FLV file as long as it is downloading quicker than the user is 
viewing it?

One version I created was about 10MB in size. But that's not a problem if 
the user is downloading quicker than it's playing, right?

As an example, if I code using a max data rate of 150kilobits per second, 
and the user is using broadband, then it doesn't really matter what the 
final size of the FLV file is cause they will be able to download it while 
playback is smooth right?

However, if a user is using a modem, then I should code at perhaps 30kbps to 
ensure a user using a 56k modem has smooth playback, and perhaps 15/20 kbps 
for users with 28.8k modems, given that these are maximum rates for the 
modem and not what they would necessarily achieve. Do many people still use 
28.8k modems or are people with modems using 56k?

If you can answer any bits of this message please reply, I don't expect 
people to bother to answer it all! Just trying to get my head round it all. 
I would think I should code at least 2 versions of the movie - one for 
broadband and one for modem people.

Thanks,
Stephen