Rob Station, PEER 1
The introduction of Flash Video has changed the way that internet users
view webpages. While in the past viewing video required a clunky, often OS specific plugin, Flash Video allows you to use the wildly popular Flash plugin to deliver moving pictures inline on your website. Sites like YouTube and Google Video have already leveraged this technology to create very popular, user driven media portals. Flash Video is becoming the medium of choice for delivering video on the web.

Flash Video and the CDN

Flash video can be delivered 4 different ways:

• As a stand alone .flv file. This method is not very popular, but an .flv file is still playable and convertible to other formats.
• Embedded in a flash .SWF file. In the case, a user creates a .swf file using the Flash authoring tool, and imports a video file right into it. This way is also not popular, as it requires the entire file to be downloaded before it will start playing.
• Streaming via RTMP to the flash player from a Flash Media Server. A dedicated server handles the duties of streaming live content out directly to requestors Flash Viewer plugin.
• Progressive HTTP download. By far the current world wide web video delivery standard. Progressive HTTP Flash Video is employed by the big Flash Video sites like Google Video andYouTube, as well as other large sites like MySpace. An actionscript-based 'player' provides start/stop/pause controls as well as handling the loading the flash video. Video can be played as soon as the first 'chunk' of the flash video file is buffered.

Progressive Download, How it Works with the CDN

There are two elements to the Progressive Download Flash Video.

i) The dynamic actionscript "player"
ii) The static .flv file, containing the actual flash video

When a user navigates to a website with a flash video element, the
user's web browser first loads the player. While loading the player the
webpage will pass it various variables, namely player size and the name
of the .flv video to be played. Because of these variables, the 'player'
portion of a Flash Video presentation usually loads from a dynamic,
uncacheable source.

Luckily, the actual video content is static, and can be loaded from
another domain. If this domain is on the CDN, the Flash Video gains all
the benefits that our global caching network provides, including
localized delivery and incredibly fast speeds.

Start a Free Trial Today

PEER 1 will offer you a free trial of their CDN service, allowing you to see the difference our CDN can make. For more information on the PEER 1 CDN, please call toll free 1.866.683.7747 or visit peer1.com