Can you stream video or flv files without Flash Media Server?

Report · May 30, 2008

Hi all

We have a streaming server, but it may not have Flash Media Server on it.

If you want to stream flv files, do you need Flash Media Server installed?

If so, and we don't want to buy Flash Media Server, is there a way to stream a video file from the streaming server into an swf without converting it to an flv file?

Any help is always appreciated.

Thanks
Chris

Report · Jun 02, 2008

quote:

We have a streaming server, but it may not have Flash Media Server on it.

A: No, FMS is required to truly stream flv files. You can however offer the videos as progressive download.

quote:

is there a way to stream a video file from the streaming server into an swf without converting it to an flv file?

A: Again you can offer these as progressive downloads through the swf file. Encoding them as .flv or .mov would suffice for this. Another option would be to embed the video directly into the swf. If it's a short clip this might work, it's not considered a best practice because the output isn't always very predictable. The most common thing you'd see is the sound not matching the video.