Mobile and Devices Developer Center

Authoring mobile video content for Flash Lite 2.x

There are many considerations when authoring video content to play back on the desktop Flash Player—so you can begin to imagine the possible difficulties encountered when authoring video content to play back on a hand-held device.

To begin with, there is a wide variety of devices, operating systems and operators, as well as several different versions of the Flash Lite Player, to consider. For the sake of this article we'll focus on the Symbian, BREW and Windows Mobile environments running the Flash Lite Player 2.0. All of the platforms discussed in this article are considered open, which is another way of saying that you can install Flash applications on the device.

One of the first considerations for an end user about to view mobile video content will be cost. What will my operator charge me to watch this video? Fortunately, there are several operators with unlimited data plans that make it easier to consider the use of video in your mobile application. However, the potential cost associated with viewing video content is an aspect you'll need to consider communicating to your potential users prior to them playing the video content.

This article will cover the requirements and considerations for developing a mobile project that includes video for playback in Flash Lite 2.0. We'll also provide details about encoding the video and how to work with Device Central to test the content on the targeted device.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, you will need to install the following software and files:

 Adobe Flash CS3 Professional

• Try
• Buy

Sample files:

• flash_device_video.zip (ZIP, 136K)

Prerequisites:

To get the most from this article, you should have a basic understanding of Flash in order to follow along with the instructions provided. When working with the sample files, you'll need to update them with the name of your own 3GP video file to make the project function. The sample files include both a local video and streaming video example.

The local video example requires that you load the video on your device in the same directory as the SWF file. The streaming video example requires that you have access to a streaming server that supports Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP).

The sample files also include the components discussed in this article, because I have made a couple of changes to them recently and the updated versions of these components are not yet posted on the Adobe Exchange.

To follow along with the steps in this article, you'll need a way to install the examples on your device. If you are using a Nokia device, the Nokia PC Suite will allow you to easily transfer the files. If you have a BREW device, you can register as a BREW developer and download AppLoader to transfer the files. If you have a Windows Mobile device, use ActiveSync to move the example files to your device.

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