Video formats
There are many video formats out on the web. Some formats are proprietary and require the respective company’s player; other formats are open and many players can play them. As Flowplayer runs a Flash video object to play the files, Flowplayer can handle virtually all formats which are supported by Flash.
Supported video formats
| Format | Video Codec | Audio Codec | File Suffix | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
FLV |
FLV (Sorenson H.263) |
MP3 |
|
The original Flash video container format. Also allows some other more exotic video codecs like On2 VP6 and Screen video. |
|
MP4 |
H.264 |
AAC |
|
Supported since Flash version 9 update 3. The H.264 - aka MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10 - video compression standard provides high quality at significantly lower bitrates compared to older codecs. |
|
F4V |
H.264 |
AAC |
|
Similar to MP4, but Flash specific, or H.264/AAC in a FLV container. Useful for high-quality php-pseudostreaming, but rare otherwise. |
For a complete description of Flash formats refer to this article.
If you also deploy your video to iOS with our ipad plugin please take note of the video encoding constraints on that platform. However, all videos which play on iOS will also play in Flash.
Be aware that otherwise valid MP4 files may carry video in a different encoding than H.264, like MPEG-4 Part 2. Playback of these files will fail.
H.264 files and metadata
In H.264-encoded videos the metadata is called a "moov atom". The moov atom is the part of the file which holds the index information for the whole file.
Many encoding software programs such as FFMPEG will insert this moov atom information at the end of the video file. This is bad. The moov atom needs to be located at the beginning of the file, or else the entire file will have to be downloaded before it begins playing.
Fortunately, Renaun Erickson at Adobe has kindly created a small AIR application that will take a standard H.264 file and relocate the moov atom to the front of the file, and then progressive downloading works properly.
Another good project for PHP applications is MOOV Relocator which is a well documented small library written in PHP to relocate (or move) the MOOV-Atom of MP4-Files from the end to the beginning of a file.