Flash Video offers unparalleled reach while offering the most options for interactivity from any Internet video format. This chapter introduces you to the number one streaming video format.

Video and the Web
File formats, such as HTML, GIF, and JPEG, have made distributing text and images over the World Wide Web common. The MP3 audio file format expanded the Web to become a vehicle for audio distribution. It wasn’t until the introduction of Flash Video (FLV) in Adobe Flash Player that video became viewable by the major- ity of the general Internet audience.

In Web 1.0 (1994 – 2003), Web video was difficult to distribute because authoring support for integrating video with other Web content was nonexistent, few formats were guaranteed to be ubiquitous across platforms, and few people had broadband connectivity. These factors made for poor viewing experiences as video plug-ins were not available or too bothersome to install and update.

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