Video players stream live or recorded video from Flash Media Server to users. Recorded video is called video on demand. Video that is being captured and streamed live is called live video. To deliver recorded video on demand, Adobe provides a video player called the FLVPlayback component; you can also use ActionScript to develop your own client video player. Adobe Flash Media Encoder lets you capture audio and video while streaming it to Flash Media Server. You can also use ActionScript to build a custom Flash Player application that captures audio and video.

The following are examples of the type of content you might stream:

• Short video clips, such as commercials up to 30 seconds
• Longer clips (often called "long tail" content), such as user-generated videos up to 30 minutes
• Very long clips, such as recorded television shows or movies up to several hours long
• Video playlists can play a list of streams in a sequence, whether live streams, recorded streams, or a mix. The playlist can be in a client-side script or, on Flash Media Interactive Server, in a server-side script.