F4V no timeline control

[Daniel Low]

With Flash video, moving around the timeline only moves between keyframes, video keyframes not animation keyframes. So if you have a keyframe set every 10 seconds then that’s roughly how far you jump each time. In order to scrub through every frame (outside of QT Player) you’ll need to create a complex custom player (which will be pretty slow to show each frame) or set each frame as a keyframe, which would be totally pointless.

Bottom line is that Flash is not the right format to use if you want to do this sort of thing.

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[Alejandro Torres]

Thanks for the help, I added more keyframes and now it works although the size of the file almost doubled…

[Rick Warda]

You are only half correct with your statement:
“Bottom line is that Flash is not the right format to use if you want to do this sort of thing.”

Being that for years flash video was “Progressive Only” your statement is correct. Progressive being, it downloads the .flv into your cache however it appears to be streaming because the user can start playing the video as soon as enough is there to watch, and keep watching provide the download is quicker than the play speed (which was we know isn’t always the case even with HiSpeed)

Now there is “Flash Media Server” (cost just under $1000 street price) that allows true streaming of .flv files. your host may already have it, in time, most will. now one wont have to wait for downloaded content in order to play, in fact the user good go right to the end of a movie instantly. Files aren’t cached therefore an extra security measure is takin. There’s also a hi-end interactive server version which allows streaming up and down (hence live broadcasts) And with the new codecs in CS4 I finally can say the video looks as good or better than quicktime or wmv of similar file sizes. Its a beautiful thing! 🙂

Rick W.

[Daniel Low]

Rick,

I am fully aware of the different methods of video delivery and that Flash is traditionally served as a progressive download.

If you read the post properly you’d see that this is not about quality but about being able to step through the video with accuracy.

With that in mind I stand by my statement. Flash is a ‘delivery’ format not a ‘client approval’ type format such as Quicktime (and certainly NOT like WMV, ever tried stepping through a WMV using just the keyboard, as you can with QT?)

When you say “And with the new codecs in CS4 I finally can say the video looks as good or better than quicktime or wmv of similar file sizes” just shows how little you know about digital video.

There are no ‘new codecs’ in CS4. Flash video uses either the ancient Sorenson Spark Codec, or the On2 VP6 codec or H.264 (Which BTW is a standard not a codec), and I’d be very surprised if you could tell me the quality differences between the various H.264 codec vendors. Also CS4 is a suite of products and Quicktime is a host to many many different codecs.

Please don’t say I’m only ‘half correct’ when you’ve got it almost completely wrong.

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Rick Warda]

No Problem Daniel,
Calm down. When I said the “new codecs in CS4” I was referring to the new .f4v file format.
I’m not sure, but I assumed it was a new codec. And I didn’t come from CS3, so I figured it was new to CS4.
Since you appear to know a great deal about this, maybe you can help me.
I’ve asked my Adobe VAR Rep and he couldn’t tell me the difference between an .flv or .f4v ?
Which is better? is one better? why could you just change the file extension of a .f4v to .flv and it still works?
I heard .f4v was engineered more for streaming, but I found no support writings on this.

Cheers,
Rick

Rick W.