Review: Macromedia Flash Professional 8
Local persistent data storage was also be high on many people’s wish list. Similar to a cookie, Local Shared Objects offer a convenient way to store and retrieve data. One obvious usage scenario for this feature is the ability to save user preferences between sessions.
Video
Flash Video has seen a significant growth in deployment over the last few months and this looks likely to continue, forcing traditional streaming media technologies to take note. It can safely be said that Flash Video is here to stay and the new video features in Flash 8 further underline Macromedia’s commitment to the format and video on the Web.
Flash Video is deployed in .flv format which at the moment can exclusively be delivered via the Flash Player. It comes as a progressively downloadable .flv file (served by Web server) as well as in streaming format using Flash Communication Server MX, soon to be called Flash Media Server 2.
Flash 8 adds a new and higher quality video codec to the Flash platform, On2’s VP6. This codec improves video quality in Flash significantly over the Sorenson Spark codec, which is still available in order to ensure backwards compatibility. The quality improvements are obvious even to the untrained eye, as this example shows. (Requires Flash 8 plug-in.)
Run-time alpha channels are now also supported. This allows for video composited with a transparent (even semi-transparent) alpha channel to be overlaid on top of existing Flash content. This can be used, for example, to guarantee that existing text remains selectable or assisting the creation of advanced effects and visualizations.
Video workflow improvements
The workflow processes for video in Flash 8 have seen big improvements. One of the best examples of this is the new and very easy to use "import video." Users are first prompted for the location of their video file, which can either be local or a remotely deployed video; local file types are not restricted to the .flv format. During the import process for non-.flv formats, users are guided through an encoding dialog that supports a variety of formats, including .mov, .avi, .mpeg, .dvi and others. The encoding wizard offers a variety of encoding settings, which can further be modified in an advanced dialog that offers cue-point insertion, crop and trim features, as well as a resize option.
It should be noted that the built-in encoder in Flash 8 does not offer variable bitrate encoding. This feature is reserved for more specialized software packages such as On2’s Flix and Sorenson Squeeze.
On the upside, Flash 8 also ships with a standalone video encoding tool called the Macromedia Flash 8 Video Encoder. This encoder supports the same functionalities as the import dialog inside Flash 8 itself and also adds batch-encoding capabilities. In addition, the Flash 8 Video Encoder also installs itself as a plug-in for other leading professional video-editing and encoding tools such as Avid Xpress Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro. This enables more advanced users to export .flv video directly from within their preferred video editing tool to Flash.