[Craig Seeman]

[David Roth Weiss] “Well, so far I’m not very impressed. The beta download doesn’t seem to play H.264 QTs, at least not on a Mac.”

Me neither. I installed the Beta on my Windows XP box. I followed the instructions to run the uninstaller first (as required for the Windows install). The uninstall and install seemed to go fine. My thinking is that the most benefit will be Windows users who have Flash installed but won’t install Quicktime 7 to play H.264.

WELLLL. Not only is there no obvious way to have Flash take control of H.264 playback from Quicktime, it now wont play Flash! I keep gettin a request to update my Flash to the current release version. Ugh!

[Craig Seeman]

I’m a bit confused. I thought you had to deliver a file that “they” would compress for use in Flash. If you have to do your own Flash encoding Squeeze is a good choice. The full version includes creating the “skin” so you might give that a try (trial version). You can at least test that with Flash 7 as it shouldn’t be any different as far as the code it generates. If it works you could then buy the full Squeeze with the On2VP6 (Flash 8) option.

You could just generate an SWF without player (rather than FLV with SWF player) but I take it that’s not desirable.

Given today’s news about Flash Player (current beta) supporting H.264, that full version of Squeeze will keep you covered there too. This might be the ultimate direction for your flash resistant web master . . . although I can imagine it may take a year from the fall release of the next flash player for market penetration to be wide enough (my speculation).

[Craig Seeman]

BTW for those who don’t understand what this thread is about, here’s Cow News Droid on Flash/H.264

[Craig Seeman]

Think of what this means to us compressionists though. One might be able to do H.264 encodes which can be used in Flash/Flash Player rather than having to do an On2VP6 (Flash 8) encode.

This might have some impact on the potential growth of Microsoft Silverlight.

I believe H.264 (MPEG4) can have the profile embedded in it so there’s no gamma shift between Mac and PC. I have no idea if this is viable with the new Flash Player though.

[Craig Seeman]

Hmm, seems you have conflicting needs. Best vs large. Unfortunately Best is often large so you’re going to have to make a difficult choice.

Best, IMHO, is keeping it in the timeline codec. If you’re workind in DV, that’s DV. If you’re working in DVCProHD then it’s that, etc. Idealy, you want to hand the compressionist a file that has gone through NO additional compression and yes that will likely be a large file.

You don’t mention with what are they doing the Flash 7 compression on the Mac with. There may be import file compatibility limits depending on the software use. Cleaner 6.5.1, Squeeze 4.5.600.1, Episode 4.3.2, other? The compressionist really needs to know this (know their tool of choice) and give you the specs.

I’m not entirely familiar with Vegas and you haven’t mentioned what they’re using to do the compression with on the Mac but you should be able to wrap your output in .avi and might be able to do it to .mov without any further compression (although I’m honestly not sure about the later given you’re on a PC and it’s a Sony product). Yes that’ll be a big file. Why not just put that on an external hard drive and hand it to the compressionist?

[Craig Seeman]

A lot depends on your worflow. I don’t have the CS3 suite so I can’t speak to the ease of use. You need to consider whether you’ll be doing the fully interactive Flash work or just handing off an .flv file for a designer or maybe simply just to upload/embedd in a Flash Player on a web site.

There’s certainly other Flash encoding software, some of it more feature rich than Flix Pro. You don’t mention whether you’re on a Mac or a PC but Squeeze, which would work on either, can do good Flash encoding with On2 purchased. Episode on the Mac has great processing filters.

[Craig Seeman]

I’ve had client hand me WMVs also saying they have no other version. On some occasions I’ll Save as MOV in Quicktime Pro. Sometimes I’ll actually export from QuicktimePro to the codec I’m using in the timline. Yes it can be slow depending on source length and timeline codec.

[Craig Seeman]

[griffeyt53] “I’m having a Homer Simpson kind of morning.”
You’re getting doughnuts?

[griffeyt53] “With a few clicks, and about 2 minutes of time, I am now creating Flash 8 content!”

I thought maybe you’re were having issues with that feature. Glad it’s working.

[Craig Seeman]

Ben is a great educator . . . but I haven’t seen his Squeeze tutorial.
There’s certainly general information about compression and codecs that can apply to the use of On2VP6. If there’s specific settings you’re having trouble with please do post a specific question.

[Craig Seeman]

Upgrade should be possible and easy and I believe it’s just about paying the extra $100 bucks and getting an appropriate serial number to activate. Give them a call today and post back here what happens.