Flash video – FLV vs SXF

[Steve Voyk]

Ok… I worked out the difference between FLV and SXF. Seems like FLV is the way to go.
These files will play off a server so what settings would you guys use (bitrates etc.) for 1920×1080 ?
Regards,
Steve

[Wes]

Do tell!!!!

Would love to learn what the difference is as well. What did you learn??

I’m using Episode and not sure why I would choose one over the other.

cheers
wes

[Steve Voyk]

Hi Wes…

FLV Video: Wildform’s high quality Flash MX FLV video (both 1-pass and 2-pass* VBR) that plays in the Flash 7 player (and higher) when loaded into the player using the correct streaming syntax (SWF files containing this syntax can be generated automatically using the included Flix FLV player program). In addition, FLV video can be imported directly into the Macromedia Flash authoring tool (versions MX and higher) and it can be streamed using the Macromedia Flashcom Server. Flix outputs FLV files with either MP3 audio, which is better for use when deploying the FLV files, and uncompressed audio which is useful when creating files intended to be imported into the Macromedia Flash authoring tool.

Note that FLV files have no 16,000 frame limit and they handle RAM in a different way than SWF files, so if you are creating large video files, it is strongly recommended that use FLV output.

Also, when creating video for CD, you should use FLV video because it performs better. FLV files also do not have a SWF framerate and play independently of the SWF framerate of any SWF file that you may load them into.

[Charles Simonson]

Essentially, use FLV for all video sequences, and SWF for all CG and animated sequences.

Now, as far as 1920×1080 FLV… hah! You are going to need a pretty beefy system to play that back, if it is even possible. I would strongly recommend encoding to some other format. Because as far as Flash is concerned, the larger the frame size gets, the more exponentially higher the requirements get in order to play back the video at full or even sufficient frame rates.