[vox] Streaming flash videos yourself (no YouTube or Google Video needed)

[Dave Margolis]

On Feb 12, 2007, at 3:22 PM, jim stockford wrote:
>> After two short Google searches, I found this article:
>>   "Video and Audio Streaming with Flash and Open Source Tools"
>>   http://klaus.geekserver.net/flash/streaming.html
>> Sounds perfect!  Hopefully I'll have some time to look into it and  
>> get it
>> going on my baby photos/video pages. :)
> I wish i understood why it's worth the trouble--how come
> putting videos up on a web page isn't good enough?
> (serious question--why bother with flash?)
>
>> -bill!
> jim

For any given type of video, a user needs a new player (or at least a  
new library of codecs).  Flash video plays in the Flash player -  
which almost everybody has or can easily get.  The Flash player is  
also a self-healing plugin.  This means if you have the Flash 4  
player installed on your system and you encounter a site that needs  
Flash 9 (for example), the player will almost always do the right  
thing - easy install, no browser restart, users can install the flash  
player locally (one doesn't need to be root), etc.

Also, the FLV format (available since Flash 7) self-streams very  
economically over HTTP.  This means you can get similar performance  
from a regular FLV file on a regular web server to what you can get  
with Real or QuickTime on their respective expensive and proprietary  
media servers.

The reason why YouTube works as well as it does has mostly to do with  
their clever leveraging of this technology - dekstop video (in almost  
any format) to web video in a few easy clicks.  The slick tagging  
system as well as the "here is the code you need to embed this in  
your blog" are also incredible features.

Bill, this couldn't have come at a better time - I am currently  
researching how to do a local YouTube-ish Flash-based-video system.  
Thanks for sending and keep us posted on your progress!

Dave