Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ:

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What is Flash FLV ?

FLV is a "Flash Live Video" file. It is a format that is designed for web playback, offering high rates of compression. Flash source files (.FLA) and deployed files (.SWF) are playable by the FLash Player but are not in general not synonymous with "video" playback. But that is changing rapidly after youtube and google finally enbraced it. Finally because we have been making players and applications for FLV for several years BEFORE they even looked at it as a way to stream videos.

The Flash Player browser plugin can play an FLV, but that FLV, must be either embedded in or linked to a SWF. That is, you can't just put the actual FLV on an HTML page. You can however reference the FLV file using action script and SWF

 

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Can I export several SWF files at the same time?

Yes, you can decompile and convert multi-file to FLA or SWF files at the one time, or export the resources to the certain file format for reusing.

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Why is FLV format better than SWF?

You may not know it, but FLV format has been around for quite some time, primarily as a video format embedded into an SWF. The difference between the two is that SWFs have a frame limit. They can only be 16,000 frames long; FLVs don't have a cap, and can theoretically be infinite in length (although I wouldn't advise testing that). Most players can't play just an FLV; they need a delivery vehicle, primarily an SWF via the Adobe Flash Player.

You may be thinking of the new export formats for Flash video and audio: .f4v and .f4a, which Flash recognizes as video for the Flash Player and audio for the Flash Player, respectively. These use encoding upgrades provided by the FLV format to capture and present higher quality streaming video and audio than was originally available through SWFs before Flash 8.