Flash CS3 Documentation

Developing Flash Lite 2.x Applications > Working with Sound, Video, and Images > Using device video

Using device video

Flash Lite 2.0 can play device video, which refers to any video format or encoding that's supported by the target device. To keep player size small (and to support a wide variety of video formats), Flash Lite 2.0 does not decode or render device video natively. Instead, Flash Lite 2.0 relies on the device to decode and render device video to the device's display. For this reason, there are some limitations to using device video. For more information, see Limitations of device video.

Some common device video formats include 3GP, 3G2 (or 3GPP2), and MPEG-4. In general, you can play any video format in your Flash Lite 2.0 application that the target device supports. Different devices support different video codecs and formats. To determine what video formats a specific device supports, check the device's specifications from the device manufacturer or use ActionScript to query the device's supported formats (see Determining supported video formats).

To deploy device video, you can either bundle it in the SWF file's library (see Using bundled device video) or load it from an external file on the user's device or from a network location (see Using external device video).

To control device video playback, use the ActionScript Video object. Flash Lite 2.0 adds additional methods to the Video object that are not available in the desktop version of Flash Player, including Video.play() and Video.pause(). For more information about using the Video object to control video playback, see Controlling video with ActionScript.

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Flash CS3