Getting Started with Streaming Flash
Videos
Posting and Sharing on
YouTube
by Douglas Dixon
See also:
Flash Video: Downloading from YouTube
and Converting Video Files
Web streaming media was a
hot topic five years ago, but getting your
videos on the Internet turned out to be a
messy business -- with the confusion of
dueling formats and their required media
players (QuickTime, Windows Media,
RealNetworks), the complexity of compression
to low Web bandwidths, and the daunting
logistics of hosting streaming content.
But
streaming is back, and really hot, as
today's broadband connections and access to
digital video tools has exploded interest in
video sharing through sites like YouTube.
Meanwhile, the three-way format battle has
been resolved in favor of a fourth dark
horse -- the Adobe Flash format
(originally Macromedia). The ubiquity of
Flash (more than 95 percent of Web users
have the Flash player) allows no-fuss video
playback directly in the browser, right on
the Web page.
So how do you take advantage
of this new opportunity to post and share
your own videos? We'll walk though getting
started with using streaming Flash video,
from posting to YouTube to customizing your
own site with video clips.
You can get started with
sharing streaming video amazingly easily by
just posting your clips on YouTube
(as the most obvious example, the process
works similarly on other such sites). Just
trim and edit the clip as desired, and
upload to the site -- YouTube even takes
care of converting the video to the proper
format. Another benefit is that YouTube
carries the cost of hosting the clip,
including the storage and bandwidth costs,
and maintains the Flash streaming server to
deliver it quickly around the globe.
YouTube - Customized Player
Once your video is posted to
YouTube, you can share it by posting or
e-mailing the link (URL) -- people can then
click to go to the YouTube site to play the
video. Even better, with a little bit of
HTML magic, you can embed the Flash video
player in your own Web pages, and have
visitors actually play the video while
remaining on your own Web site.
Of course, using free
third-party sites does involve a loss of
control over your own content. The clip is
open and shared -- you can tell your family
and friends about it, and anyone else
anywhere in the world can also view your
personal movies. In addition, the site may
reject the clip, for example if it is too
long, or can remove it at any time if
someone complains about it. There's also the
issue of ownership -- the terms and
conditions transfers significant rights to
the site when you upload. The site then can
do anything they want with your video,
including licensing it to others and selling
advertising to profit from your work. But
certainly if you're just having fun, or want
to make a name for yourself, these free
hosting sites can be a great deal.
The next step is to take
more control over the presentation of your
videos by customizing how it is embedded in
your own Web pages, and by compressing the
video yourself. Sites like YouTube perform a
default compression process, whereas you can
customize the options to help your specific
material look better. YouTube even uses an
older version of Flash video format in order
to be compatible with older players, but you
may be willing to move up to the new format
for your target audience.
And you can host the video
on your own site, or on a commercial site
with a defined quality of service to ensure
it's available when people (like potential
clients or customers) want to see it. You
can actually stream Flash video from a
regular Web server (i.e., where your website
is hosted), but it's more efficient to host
the video on a separate dedicated streaming
server.
Getting your videos on
YouTube is quite straightforward, and well
documented in the YouTube / Google Help
Center (www.google.com/support/youtube).
Just set up an account, get your video ready
in a common format, and then upload it.
Videos for YouTube need to
be shorter than 10 minutes, smaller than 100
MB, and in a common video file format,
especially Windows Media (WMV), Windows AVI,
QuickTime MOV, and MPEG (MPG). YouTube
recommends the MPEG-4 format at 320x240
resolution and with MP3 audio. If you're
editing just for YouTube, there's no need to
save the clip at a higher resolution than it
will be played back -- which also helps
reduce the file size and upload time.
You can shoot and upload
low-res videos from cell phones and digital
cameras (typically MPG), edit Web cam and
standard-resolution videos with simple tools
like Apple iMovie (MOV) and Windows Movie
Maker (WMV), or edit more sophisticated
videos from standard-def camcorders using
desktop tools (i.e., in DV AVI format) --
and then export them in a lower-res format
for faster uploading.
YouTube also offers the
Web-based Remixer tool built on
Adobe Premiere Express for quickly
editing or remixing videos already stored in
your account (www.youtube.com/ytremixer).
You can sequence and add footage,
transitions, borders, captions, and audio.
To upload your video (after
you've signed up for an account and are
logged in), click Upload Videos in
the top right corner of any YouTube page.
Enter descriptive information to help users
search for your content (Title, Description,
Tags, Category). Then browse for the video
file and start it uploading. The time
required for the upload depends on the
bandwidth of your Internet connection.
YouTube estimates uploads will take some 1
to 5 minutes per MB over a high-speed
Internet connection. After the upload is
complete, YouTube still needs to complete
the conversion and processing of the video
before it appears online in your account
under My Videos.
My Videos
YouTube offers other upload
options, including uploading videos directly
from a mobile phone by sending a MMS
multimedia email to an address that you set
up in your account.
And, you don't even have to
go though a separate upload process -- some
new versions of video editing tools have
built Web uploading directly into the
application. For example, CyberLink
PowerDirector 6 uploads to YouTube (www.cyberlink.com)
and Pinnacle Studio 11 publishes
directly to Yahoo! Video (www.pinnaclesys.com).
Once your video is posted,
you can share it as a single clip to
YouTube, or by creating a Playlist, or
through subscriptions to a Channel that you
define. If you don't want the video to be
globally accessible, you also can set it to
be Private and share it only with specific
people on your contact list.
The easiest way to access a
video posted on YouTube is by using the link
to the clip's page at the site. YouTube
helpfully shows the URL to the page to the
right of the video window, ready to copy and
paste into an email or to post as a link on
your own website.
The YouTube playback URL
link looks like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1b2c3d4e5z
Anyone then can use the link
to jump to the YouTube site, with the clip
loaded in a player and displayed along with
information about the clip, including the
nuber of times it has been viewed and other
clips with similar descriptions.
Even better, you can post
the clip on your own site, as part of your
own Web page. Again, you can restrict the
sharing options for the clip to specify that
you do not want the clip to be embedded on
external sites.
Embedding does not require
any special Web authoring magic. Along with
the page URL, YouTube also displays an Embed
box with a chunk of HTML code to insert the
video player on your own page.
Just paste the code into
your website or on your blog. The HTML code
inserts a Flash window on the page with your
movie loaded for playback.
The YouTube Embed HTML
code looks like:
<object width="425"
height="350">
<param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/a1b2c3d4e5z"></param>
<param name="wmode"
value="transparent"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/a1b2c3d4e5z"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
wmode="transparent" width="425"
height="350">
</embed></object>
You also can customize the
look of the player by selecting options
under Custom Players. Choose the
layout and color scheme, and select a clip
from your videos, favorites, or playlists.
This generates new HTML code to use on your
site. Any further changes to the settings
for the custom player will be automatically
updated everywhere it is used -- without
needing to edit the pages again.
Custom Players
The YouTube Custom Player
HTML code looks like:
<object width='425'
height='366'>
<param name='movie'
value='http://www.youtube.com/cp/a1b2c3d4e5z
a1b2c3d4e5z='></param>
<param name='wmode'
value='transparent'></params>
<embed src='http://www.youtube.com/cp/a1b2c3d4e5z
a1b2c3d4e5z ='
type='application/x-shockwave-flash'
wmode='transparent' width='425'
height='366'>
</embed></object>
Once you start taking
advantage of streaming video, you can move
on to customize how your videos appear by
doing the compression and embedding and
hosting yourself.
Be aware that Flash video
actually uses two different video formats,
the older Sorenson Spark codec (up
though Flash 7,
www.sorensonmedia.com) and the newer
On2 VP6 codec (introduced with Flash
Player 8,
www.on2.com/technology/vp6). Adobe
recommends the newer VP6 as the preferred
video codec for higher quality, but the
older Spark still works fine for sites like
YouTube.
While exporting to Flash is
not (yet) a common option for video editing
tools, some New conversion tools are
starting to build in support for exporting
Flash video, including Sorenson Squeeze
for Windows and Macintosh (www.sorensonmedia.com).
You also can export directly
to Flash in Adobe Premiere Pro CS 3
(also now for Windows and Mac,
www.adobe.com/products/premiere). The
built-in Adobe Media Encoder provides
presets for different formats (including
widescreen) and bitrates, and provides
options for setting the Flash codec and
advanced settings. The result is a FLV file
-- video and audio compressed into a single
file in Flash video format.
Premiere Pro - Flash Export
Also,
if you're already working with the Flash
professional authoring tool to create Web
animations and movies, Adobe Flash CS3
Professional has several options for
encoding clips to Flash video (www.adobe.com/products/flash).
There's the built-in Flash Video Import
wizard, the stand-alone Flash 8 Video
Encoder, and the Flash Video QuickTime
Export plug-in, which encodes into FLV
format when exporting from third-party video
editing applications that support the
QuickTime exporter plug-ins.
Then to play the video, the
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Web design tool
has built-in support for embedding a Flash
video clip (www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver).
Under Insert > Media, choose Flash Video,
and then select the options for the player,
including the look of the skin, and whether
the clip automatically starts playing (and
rewinds at the end). There's also an option
to insert code to check whether the user's
version of Flash is too old to play the
video, and offer to download the upgrade if
needed.
Dreamweaver - Insert Flash Video
The generated code
references the Flash video clip as an
external FLV file, which may be hosted on
your website, or on a separate media server.
The other option you need to specify when
creating the Flash file is whether the video
is going to be delivered by Streaming, or by
Progressive Download. True streaming
requires that the video be hosted on a Flash
streaming server, which is required for
advanced interactivity and features. But you
can host clips quite satisfactorily on a
plain old regular Web server, i.e., along
with your website. With progressive
downloading, the Flash player works behind
the scenes to download and buffer the clip
in order to provide a smooth playback
experience -- even including seeking around
quickly in smaller clips.
Dreamweaver - Flash Player
When you insert a Flash
clip, Dreamweaver generates the required
HTML into your Web page, and adds support
files to your site, including the skin for
the player (SWF) and JavaScript code (JS).
Then when you upload and
open the page in a browser, the FLV file is
displayed in a nice video player, with play
controls, a shuttle slider, and volume
control. Ta da!
As we have seen, getting
started with streaming video is no longer a
big deal. It's wonderfully straightforward
to quickly post your own clips on free sites
like YouTube, and share them around the
globe. While you give up some control over
your work in the process, it's a great way
to have fun and experiment with very little
hassle.
Even better, you can embed
the clips right in pages on your own site,
without sending visitors off to another
site, or requiring a separate player
application. However, the video player
window is branded by YouTube, and may show
other material from YouTube.
You then can move on to
preparing and hosting your own clips.
Compress your videos at different
resolutions, and trade off options for
better video quality. Host the videos on
your selected server -- a simple Web server,
or a dedicated Flash streaming server for
longer clips. And embed the clips deeper
into the design of your own Web pages, using
pre-defined players as in Dreamweaver, or
even with custom controls authored in Flash
Professional.
So get out there, have fun,
and start sharing your videos!
