Huge video!

[brianjc67]

Hi there, first post on the forum, hope someone can help.

I have been asked to put a video on an html page of a website, it has already been converted to a swf and its massive, 150mb. What is the best way to to this? Is there a simple way to stream the content so that the viewer can see the stream progress, ie youtube style?

Thanks in advance

Brian

[Dene]

You should load the video into your flash movie as an external FLV file - ie progressive streaming.

[brianjc67]

Thanks for the quick reply, could you give a little more info if poss?

I dont have the fla or the original video, just the published swf containing the video. Is there anything else I can do to the swf alone to stream it for the user, or do I really need to import the raw video as FLV?

Many thanks again

[rdoyle720]

A swf file will play as it downloads, as long as the user's connection can keep up with the load. If not it will stutter as it plays, which is why you often see Flash files use preloaders. Flash files can not "stream", meaning if you've downloaded the first five minutes, you can't jump ahead to 15 minutes and start watching from there, you have to wait for minutes 5-15 to load first. If all you have is a swf, your only option is to try to preload and hope your users have nice fast connections.

A better solution would probably be to redo the video as .flv, try to compress it to a smaller size, and if it's a long video, pay a streaming service to actually "stream" it.