Authoring mobile video content for Flash Lite 2.x

Working with device video and devices

The unfortunate outcome of supporting device video is that it is dependent on the device. In other words, you'll find that H.264 is supported on some devices and not on others. You'll also find that streaming video is supported on some devices and not others. Let's take a look at a couple of examples. It is possible to stream video to a Nokia 6682 (Symbian OS) from a streaming server via the RTSP protocol. It is not possible to stream device video to a Windows Mobile device using RTSP, although local device video plays without issues. With that said, I'm sure that I will get a response from someone that has knowledge of a mystical combination of patches and drivers that will make this possible. I'll leave those combinations up to you to validate. You will find the same kinds of issues when using BREW devices. When attempting to test streaming video on the LG VX8100, I found that it does not "officially" support any video format—let alone streaming. Running the same test on the Motorola V3C revealed that this device does support streaming. Anyone familiar with Flash video understands that it is possible to access video in a number of ways. You can embed the video in a SWF file, you can stream the video from a Flash Media Server and you can access video via http, (also known as progressive download) with little concern of the hardware it is playing on. This is not the case with device video, which requires a great deal more preparation and testing.

Device Central is an incredible resource when you're considering integrating device video into your projects. You can think of Device Central as the update and upgrade from the mobile emulator in Flash 8. The Flash 8 mobile emulator was a good start, but it pales in comparison to Device Central. Device Central has a great deal of information about device capabilities (updated quarterly via the web) as well as an emulator that can be used from nearly every tool in Adobe Creative Suite 3. You can use Device Central to periodically check for Device Updates to ensure you have the newest information (see Figure 2). Device Central provides information about the color depth, screen size, Flash version, memory, video formats, content scaling, etc. The only information that I would like to see added to Device Central is whether or not a specific device supports RTSP. Device Central can educate you on a given set of devices; however it cannot address the issues associated with using device video—namely the differences inherent in that set of devices.

Figure 2. Device Central CS3 is updated quarterly and you can check to see if you have the latest version by choosing Devices > Check for Device Updates…

The mobile emulator in Flash 8 was just that: an emulator. There was very little device information included and the provided information was nearly impossible to compare to other target devices. There were also a few problems with the Flash 8 mobile emulator. For example, when attempting to load device video via http the file appeared to work in the emulator. But when you moved the same SWF file to a Symbian device, such as the Nokai 6682 or E62—the operation resulted in an error.

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