With Macromedia Flash MX you can embed video in your Macromedia Flash movies (SWFs). In previous versions, video could only be simulated with a series of bitmap or vector images. Now you can import video clips in a variety of formats, including MOV (QuickTime), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), and MPG/MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group), directly into a Flash document. Embedded video is compressed with the Sorenson Spark video codec, which produces high quality video at small file sizes. You can scale, skew, rotate, and mask embedded video, as well as control it with ActionScript. During playback in a SWF file, Macromedia Flash Player 6 natively decompresses and displays the embedded video clip.

As in previous versions, you can also use Macromedia Flash MX to add Flash content to an existing QuickTime movie.The QuickTime video clip is imported as a linked file and is only viewable when played in QuickTime Player.

This tutorial will walk you through the basics of working with embedded and linked video in Macromedia Flash MX.

About using video in Macromedia Flash MX

Importing video

About video compression

Compressing video in Macromedia Flash MX

Video object properties

Working with video on the Stage

Publishing Macromedia Flash movies with video

Video playback considerations and tips

Additional information about Sorenson Spark

Tim Statler Tim Statler writes tutorials for the macromedia.com support site. 21 May 2002 Flash, embedded, video, linked, Sorenson Spark, tutorial 9920