Video and Flash

Although the primary functioin of Flash is to produce streaming vector animations, Flash is also a great medium for compiling video clips, adding text overlays and adding sound (or voice-overs) to video.

Rather than exporting your final animatioin (or video) to the Shockwave format, you can export to the Quicktime and Quicktime Video formats.

Quicktime is rapidly becoming the standard for web based video, primarily due to it's "open-source" nature. Open source means that the source code is open (or free) to the public for ongoing revisions and improvements as technology changes.

Other file formats such as those used for RealVideo or Microsofts AVI are owened and maintained by their respective companies, which means that development for these formats is slower and confined to corporate interests.

As the technologies which enable mega bandwidth connectivity become readily available Flash will be in position to meet the needs of the digital video generation.

Probably the greatest advantage Quicktime has over it's competitors is its ability to incorporate interactivity into the video. This means that you can develop interactive video for the web the same way that you develop interactive animations for the web with Flash - which is very cool.

Importing and manipulating video clips in flash identical to importing an manipulating static images.

For information on how to export to Quicktime, see Chapter 11.

For more information on the Quicktime format, goto www.quicktime.com