Flash 8 Video: Flash in the Pan or Serious Contender?

The affiliate program sells On2’s line of Flix encoding tools, including Flix Pro and Flix Exporter. Flix Pro and Flix Standard are standalone transcoders that range in price from $69 to $269. Flix Pro is available in both a Macintosh and Windows version, while Flix Standard is Windows-only and demos on the company’s Web site are only available in Windows versions as of the time of this writing.

"What we would normally render from After Effects, and export as PNG sequences with an alpha transparency, can now be replaced with an FLV file," said Joey Princz, a beta tester for Flash 8. "The [new] codec will yield excellent results at a much smaller file size . . . hence quicker load times or more objects on the screen."

On2’s Flix Exporter, though, may be the Trojan Horse that pulls Flash 8 video out of the online development community and fills the gap between Flash and the world of workflow encoding. Exporter is a plug-in for exporting Flash 8 video from Autodesk’s Media Cleaner or Apple’s QuickTime Pro and is likely to attract a larger pool of potential encoders who already use tools like Cleaner to generate multiple versions of a single file for Web deployment.

Still, Flash 8 video has two near-term hurdles to address before finding widespread implementation. First, despite the fact that Macromedia claims an installed Flash player user base of 98% of all computers globally, the actual conversion rate to Flash 8 will take time if previous adoption rates are any indication. Second, the system requirements for Flash 8 may eliminate a large portion of the market that either doesn’t meet the specifications or meets the requirements but experiences an undesirable playback, especially for video.

One question that is beginning to be raised about Flash 8 video is whether it can compete with Windows Media and DivX or delay H.264’s ascendancy. McIntyre points to Macromedia’s acceptance among developers and consumers alike as a way to generate significant buzz for the new Flash 8 video and reiterates his belief that Flash 8/VP6 is destined to stand alongside more well-known codecs by referring to a testimonial that Macromedia provided for On2’s Web site:

"Quality. This is the first thing we looked at and our target was to at least cut the bandwidth in half while keeping the same visual quality," says Tinic Uro, principal engineer, Macromedia Flash Player. "We do not only need to support Intel, but also PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and many others. Recompiling for a new platform had to be painless and essentially require no code changes."