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What is the difference between SWF and F4V in the context of Streaming or progressive Download?

New Here ,
Nov 29, 2010 Nov 29, 2010

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Hello everybody,

I am absolutely a beginner in working with Captivate and furthermore my technological know how is not that good.

So, I have problems to understand if the export formats SWF and F4V are both capable to be published in the Internet as streaming video and as progressive Download? Well so, I do not really understand the difference between streaming and progessive download either?

Furthermore I was asking myself if this issue depends on how I imported flash videos (there are these two options) in my Captivate project during the production phase?

I would be very thankful for some helping information!

Greetings,

Mareike the beginner

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LEGEND ,
Nov 29, 2010 Nov 29, 2010

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Welcome to our community

I'm not certain I fully understand the differences myself, but will toss out what I believe to be true about the formats. Hopefully, if I'm incorrect in my bellief, someone with more definitive knowledge will chime in.

It was explained to me a couple of years back and is my understanding that "streaming" only applies to a video based format such as F4V, FLV and it doesn't apply to SWF. With SWF, you may specify a preload value. So when the SWF transmits from the web server to the PC, a certain percentage has to be received before play begins. But that's not streaming. It's preloading.

For streaming to occur, the web server establishes a communication channel between the server and the destination PC. This channel is monitored to see what speed is in use. Only enough information is then transmitted to be comfortable at that speed. If the speed improves during the connection, the server serves data at a faster rate. If the connection degrades, the information transmitted is also scaled back so as to accommodate the lower speed.

With SWF, after it has all been downloaded, a savvy user is able to poke around in their temporary internet files and save the SWF for play later. With streaming, this isn't possible because as the stream is viewed, it evaporates from memory.

Seriously hoping others will chime in here to confirm or deny this.

Cheers... Rick

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New Here ,
Nov 29, 2010 Nov 29, 2010

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Hi Rick,

thanks a lot for your answer! It is really difficult to find some information about that in the internet without just finding some really technological based information. In one German forum I read something nearly the same that you said.

So perhaps there will someone else to confirm your statement!

Thanks a lot again,

Mareike

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LEGEND ,
Nov 29, 2010 Nov 29, 2010

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Hello again

It really is a shame that video has to be such a "black magick" sort of affair. It seems all fraught with mysterious CODECs and bit rates and formats and players. Sort of a wild wild west if you will.

Sort of makes one wonder if there isn't a conspiracy afoot to keep it mysterious so that those in the know can perform their magickal incantations and charge others an arm and a leg for doing so.

I like simple things... Rick

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Participant ,
Nov 30, 2010 Nov 30, 2010

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Videos (FLV, F4V, MP4, AVI, 3GP etc) are different from SWF.

The fundamental difference is interactivity - Videos are not interactive (you can only see). SWFs can take user input and then act based on it. If you want your user to take a quiz (that means he needs to answer it), then a video cannot do - you need a SWF.

Videos:

Videos store a collection of images internally (usually 30 images/frames per second). When a video file is played, these images are played one after another and gives you a feeling of motion picture. Since these images would otherwise take more space, videos store these compressed. The software piece used for this compression are called Encoders (MPEG4, H.264 etc). Since the images(frames more technically) are compressed, then the player needs something to de-compress. This is called Decoder. Encoders and decoders together are called CODEC.

SWF:

SWFs too do the same thing as above but a lot more. They are interactive - users can input data (say your name), use mouse navigation etc and the SWF behaves appropriately. Say, When you click at certain portion an animation plays.

Progresive Download and Streaming:

This applies to Video (not SWFs). When a video is delivered from a server to a user's computer, one of the above methods can be used. Streaming, just send packet by packet of the video and after showing to user it is ignored. Alternatively progressive download is same as usual http download, but the playback starts before the full download is completed. Ideally it is possible for user to play this video again without downloading again.

SWFs are always downloaded fully by the browser and then played.

Hope this helps !

-Sony

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Participant ,
Nov 30, 2010 Nov 30, 2010

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This could give some additional info on progressive vs streaming:

Video Delivery Types in Captivate « The Adobe Captivate Blog

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New Here ,
Nov 30, 2010 Nov 30, 2010

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Thanks a lot for your help! Right now, all my information put together makes sense and confirm my original impression!

Best greetings,

Mareike

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