Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 24th Feb 2008 21:55 UTC, submitted by Punktyras
"The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software."
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Member since:2005-11-15
They use whatever player is installed in the user's machine by using the EMBED tag correctly, that is pointing to the file instead of the app they want to use.
That's a good way to cause compatibility problems. Sometimes your video plays in QuickTime, sometimes Totem, sometimes not at all. The HTML5 video tag may fix this problem if it ever gets deployed.
Meanwhile, a Web page author can ensure that the behavior is consistent by specifying a particular player.
RE[3]: H.264 directly
by StephenBeDoper on Mon 25th Feb 2008 21:07
in reply to "RE[2]: H.264 directly"
Member since:2005-07-06
They use whatever player is installed in the user's machine by using the EMBED tag correctly,
The reason why Flash / FLV is chosen by the people distributing content online is that it allows them to safely assume that the overwhelming majority of their visitors already have the necessary software installed.
From the perspective of technological idealism, directly embedding H.264 is of course preferable. But the reality is that it usually doesn't come down to a choice between FLV or directly embedding something like H.264 - much more often, the choice is between FLV and WMV / QT / Real / etc. Given the pragmatic context, I think that Flash is at least a lesser-evil.
Member since:2005-07-18
... those stupid I-put-4-times-the-same-ad-in-flash websites anyway.
On a related note, Flashblock does a wonderful job of stopping flash ads from running unless you click on them. http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
Member since:
2006-09-30
They use whatever player is installed in the user's machine by using the EMBED tag correctly, that is pointing to the file instead of the app they want to use.
There is absolutely no reason to use flash for that usage.
Even totem in Linux is able to play videos in well done pages in moz, I was actually surprised to see unexpectedly.
One more reason not to use flash.
I'm gonna remove it again from my XP install I think. It eats up the cpu (so the battery too) on the laptop with those stupid I-put-4-times-the-same-ad-in-flash websites anyway.