Flash CS3 is my preferred option at the moment for streaming video because of how easy and straight forward the process is and the fact that users do not need any other plugin than the flash plugin.
Obviously you need your video to begin with which can be in any format that Flash CS3 supports such as .avi .mpg .mov etc but:
- Open Flash and create a new document
- import your video file into flash through file -> import -> import video
- browse to your video file and then click next
- On this screen choose “select progressive download from web server” then click next
- Make any changes you want at this encoding step or just leave everything as default then click next
- Choose your skinning and controls option and click next
- On this final screen click finish - you will be prompted to save your Flash fla file to some where (probably best to save it into a new folder )
Flash will then go through the Flash Video encoding progress-where it will create a .flv version of your original video. How long this takes will depend on your computer and the size of the video - You should now be back within the Flash workspace with your movie on the stage.
- If you just want a web page that displays your video just click File–>Publish and flash will publish/create all the neccessary file for you and save them into the same folder as the .fla file was saved into.
- Then you need to upload the following files to your server
- .html-webpage showing the video
- .swf- the shockwave file to stream your flash video
- Skin—-.swf- the play controls file
- .flv- the flash video
- AC_RunActiveContent.js - the javascript file which flash created to embed the swf file
DO NOT RENAME THE SWF FILE AT THIS POINT UNLESS YOU UPDATE THE HTML CODE AND IF YOU WANT TO RENAME THE FLV YOU WILL NEED TO REPUBLISH YOUR FILE FROM FLASH
- If you want to embed this video into another web page then you would just insert the main swf into the webpage the way you would insert any .swf file but it important that when you upload to your web host you upload the 2 swf’s and the .flv files and THAT THE FILES ARE ALL STILL WITHIN THE SAME FOLDER SO THAT THE SWF FILE CAN FIND THE FLV FILE TO STREAM.
- And that should be it – If your video doesn’t work when you have uploaded everything and your sure you have uploaded everything to the right folders then you may need to register the .flv mime type. Check this with your web host or look in your control panel.