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Flash Streaming Video |
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On Your Site In Minutes
Flash is a technology that is used to create animations and very attractive and engrossing advertisements that can be easily uploaded and hosted on the Internet. Flash streaming videos are videos that are made with flash technology and sent across the Internet to viewers in one continuous stream instead of the viewer having to download the flash file before viewing the video. This is the advantage of flash streaming videos. The disadvantage is that the viewer cannot skip to the part he or she wants to view as is possible with downloaded video files.
Just with other video formats Flash also provides different ways to deliver audio and video files across the Internet. Flash primarily uses two techniques to deliver multimedia files over the network, one is called Streaming and the other method is called progressive download. People use these terms interchangeably but progressive downloading is not true streaming.
Flash streaming videos require the use of a special server application called Flash Media Server or FMS. This is a Flash streaming video power house and is needed only by web sites with a very high demand for bandwidth. This also known as the Macromedia Flash Server, known formerly as the Flash Communication Server, this is a software package which runs on a normal web server ad lends extra functionality for multimedia being streamed in the Flash format. A good example of this format will be live streaming and chatting. The FMS opens a persistent connection between the client PC and the server transmitting the flash streaming videos. In a normal TCP IP network the client will send periodic requests to the server and the server will respond with the information requested by the client. Persistent connectivity means that the client and the server are in constant contact with no break in the signal.
During a progressive download, which is not really streaming technology, flash streaming is very neatly simulated. Though progressive download is not really streaming, it is the most viable and reasonable option for web sites that need short streaming solutions. This is the easiest and the cheapest way to transmit and display Flash streaming videos on a web page. It may not be as powerful or flexible as true flash streaming videos most end users will never know the difference. Progressive downloading technology does have some limitations such as not being able to be used for live events, it is less efficient than true streaming, does not automatically adjust to the clients network speed, it is not secure and the video file is saved on the end users computer (if you want to count that as a disadvantage) and the client cannot jump ahead to a later part of the video until the whole part has downloaded.
So in the ultimate analysis, Flash streaming video can be adjusted to be a progressive download and no one will know the difference between the two techniques. Progressive downloads will only show up if the connection is really fast because streaming works well with very fast broadband connections. That is why flash streaming needs streaming servers for efficiency. So, if the connection of the network is slow no one will know the difference between the two.
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