Lance, great answer - valuable info here.
I need to put some very high res 3D anims (POV-generated, <very> abstract,
fast moving, colorful images) on line. All things considered (quality being
top priority), do you think the MX Pro version is the best of all choices?
thanks much.
D.


"Lance Birch" <-> wrote in message news:41e204ea$1@news.povray.org...
> "Steve Shelby" <ssh### [at] shelbyvisioncom> wrote in message
> news:41e152f4$1@news.povray.org...
> > Hi all,
> > Do any of you out there use Macromedia Flash, and if so, why, and if
not,
> > why not?  I'm curious because I'm wondering if it would be better than
> > Windows Media Player for displaying animations on a website. I know it
is
> > expensive, but I looked on Ebay, and it's available there for a pretty
> > reasonable price.
> > Thank you,
> > Steve Shelby
>
> I think that Tom and GrimDude have jumped the gun slightly in answering
your
> question (no offence guys, it's just that there's a little more to be said
> on the subject than "don't use Flash")...
>
> Avoiding the subject of whether the video is necessary in the first place
> (and excluding the idea of making entire websites using Flash, which
luckily
> pretty much no one does these days as they've finally realised it's like
> making an entire website using full-browser JPEGs):
>
> If you're talking about video displayed directly in a website, Flash is
> actually a good alternative to what else is around (so the rest of my
> response focuses on that use of Flash - video in a web page); if you're
> talking about video that a user downloads, it's not a good format (MPEG or
> something more universal is a better bet).
>
> Now, on to Flash and video in a web page:
>
> If you want to display animations on your website (right on the page), for
> example if you have a gallery of animations that you want to be able to
> stream, or you're trying to display methods/techniques of something, or if
> you have video footage that you want to display, Flash is actually a
pretty
> good alternative to encoding the files in WMV, MOV, etc... if the
animation
> isn't of a very high resolution.
>
> The reason is that most people have Flash Player 6 or higher, which means
> they can display video encoded in the flash video format FLV.  This
> eliminates problems with codec compatibility (for example, even if you
have
> the ability to play WMV files, some WMV files won't work because of
various
> versions of the codec, or because Windows Media Player just doesn't want
to
> play nice with the browser of choice that the user has), and of having to
> get users to install yet another plugin or player that attempts to take
over
> the system (Real Player, Quicktime, etc - although these now have
> non-official "codec packs" available, not many people want to go to the
> trouble of installing them).  Flash is good in this respect because
Windows
> has for a long time come with the IE Flash Player installed by default.
>
> For users of other browsers and platforms, the Flash Player is available
> there as well, and is one of the few plugins that's pretty painless and
> quick to install - this makes it significantly better than Quicktime, Real
> Player or Windows Media Player 9/10/11/whateverthey'reuptonow in this
> regard.
>
> So, if you want to stream video and have it displayed on a web page
(rather
> than downloading it, or whatever), encoding the video in FLV in Flash is
> actually a pretty good way.
>
> Of course, there will be people who will not want to install Flash Player
or
> who don't have it installed, for whatever reason - but as has been
> mentioned, this is the same with *any* plugin, so there will always be a
> number of users who won't be able to view the content regardless of the
type
> of file you encode the animation in.
>
> Now the downsides:
>
> * Flash is expensive to purchase.
> * Flash does a pretty good job of encoding MOV/WMV/etc into FLV but to get
> *really* good quality and still have small file sizes, you either need the
> additional Sorenson encoding program (I think it's called Spark), which is
> an additional cost, or you need the top Flash version (MX Pro), which also
> comes with a better encoder.
> * Not all users will have Flash installed (but that's like any proprietary
> format/plugin)
>
> So in summary:
>
> If you want to put video into a web page directly (have it display on the
> page along with other content) and/or you want to stream video, Flash is a
> pretty good alternative compared to Quicktime, Real Player and Windows
> Media, so long as the video isn't of a very large resolution.  Flash does,
> however, cost a lot, and to get the best video compression you'll need
> either the most expensive version of Flash, or the standard version with
the
> Sorenson Spark encoder utility.  If you want to provide video in a format
> that people can download, Flash isn't the right thing to use - something
> like Quicktime, Real Player or Windows Media would be better suited, or a
> more widely-supported format like MPEG would be even better.
>
> Lance.
>
> thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
> thehandle - www.thehandle.com
>
>

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