[elevader]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to throw down a topic for discussion that I think all can contribute to:

Check this article out:
<a href="http://www.flashmagazine.com/html/528.htm" target="_blank">http://www.flashmagazine.com/html/528.htm</a>

The article is about video streaming players like Quicktime, Real, Windows Media and the new Contender:

Flash MX

The article covers each one, and why they believe that strangely enough, Flash will win the war.

I agree, being a web developer, and dealing with rich media everyday at my job.

Before you check it out, you also must observe another new piece of technology. One that has Apple up in Arms against Sorenson. It is the true scare to Quicktime:

Flash Communications Server:
<a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashcom/productinfo/features/flash_feature_tour/" target="_blank">http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashcom/productinfo/features/flash_feature_tour/</a>

here are some links to cool stuff made with it upon launch of the product:

Executive presentation
<a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/mx/presentation/" target="_blank">http://www.macromedia.com/software/mx/presentation/</a>

Random Media:
<a href="http://www.randommedia.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.randommedia.co.uk/</a>

I must say that this new platform provided by macromedia is the best, cheapest, and easiest system to work with for this type of media.

Take a look and drop comments on your perspective of the war to come.

[nitram_at_work]

Precisely what I thought when I saw and started using Flash MX. It would turn out to be the dark horse in the race and sneak up on all the others.

However, Flash's strength lies not in it's video handling abilities (which are average) but in its ability to tie it together with it's interactivity. Quicktime has some of that, but not many people use it unfortunately.

Remember, Flash can't stream live video and it's quality is average. It won't replace QT. It will complement it. Make your video in QT, then immport to Flash if you have to. They work together

[Demonhood]

it doesn't help that flash (haven't used MX yet, but used 3, 4 and 5) is one of the most frustrating programs to use. ever. spent more time yelling at my monitor than i did making productive swf files.

it's not surprising that an article at flashmagazine.com predicts flash will be the winner. but i agree with nitram; flash is great for interactivity, something that quicktime only barely touches upon. i'd rather have a bunch of individual products that do something well, than one program that does everything only so so.

flash for interactive, quicktime for video (streaming, VR, etc.). windows media player for...um....asf files. and real video for...oh, that's right, no OS X player. so, for nothing.

<small>[ 07-11-2002, 07:16 PM: Message edited by: Demonhood ]</small>

[godzookie2k]

Have you actually SEEN the framerates provided by long videos through flash? Its abysmal. Sound drops out of synch after less than a minute. This makes video through flash nearly impossible for anything more than a few seconds. The shoddy compression quality doesn't need its own rant either.

[godzookie2k]

Actually, I'm not surprised at all by their decision at flash's ultimate supremacy in the DV world, being that they are a flash magazine, but they are horribly mistaken. Aside from my points above, a lack of an editing system for flash based video is a problem as well. Flash taking over the DV/Streaming Video world is about as funny as Flash taking the Interactive CDROM development environment away from Director. Flash-monkey's give the program (don't get me wrong, its great) way too much credit. Flash's video implementation is just too much of a kludge/bandaid fix than a real implementation. Where are my editing tools, sound controls? Will flash play any format OTHER than .swf? At least a volume control that doesn't require any actionscript coding? Oh, wait. They don't exsist.&lt;/tirade&gt;

[Millennium]

Actually, QuickTime's interactivity features are quite powerful. Where QT really falls short is in vector graphics, which is what Flash was originally designed for.

Oh, and the fact that there are basically no affordable and easy tools to work with QuickTime's interactivity doesn't help it either. About the only thing out there is Tattoo, and that's limited to making skins. These skins actually use some of QT's most powerful interactivity features, but they just barely scratch the surface, just like Tattoo.

Head on over to <a href="http://www.totallyhip.com" target="_blank">http://www.totallyhip.com</a> if you want to see some examples of just what QuickTime is capable of.

Does this mean that one is better than the other? Not really; they have different strengths and weaknesses, and complement each other quite well. When you combine them, by embedding a Flash track in a QuickTime movie or embedding a QuickTime movie in a Flash file, things get really cool. Shame more people haven't done that.

[elevader]

You are wrong my friend up above! You can stream live viedeo very easily!!!!

Flash Comm Server support one to many as well as many to many.

if you haven't seen yet, it can use your webcam and mic, stream it to the server and the server broadcasts it out. Flash 6 clients pick up the stream no problem. The Professional edition of the servr support 500 connections right out of the box.

You're right that the framerates aren't up to par with quicktime, but that's what you get for a web player that is 400k, as opposed to QuickTime's big size.

The average time for a weathered Flash developer to get a multi -user video conference app off the ground and running is around 1 hour or so. When the Components(drag and drop pre programmed tools) come out. That number will decrease to about 10 minutes.

Lets see heads do that with Quicktime. Does Quiktime Broadcaster even support many to many?

And yes you are right! Mixed with all the rest of Flash's interactive tools, you get quite a package!

Note: yes you can tween a live incoming video stream!!!!!!! Damn!

[HiDDeN]

QT really does has it's advantage in interactive featuring.
There is one shortage in it that really bothers me. It's not quite capable to view avi properly.