This Yellowknife municipal election website I have been working on for the past couple of weeks required shooting/processing and uploading 19, 5-minute videos. Since Flash video is installed in all modern browsers and accessible to the largest audience (99 per cent), it is the way to go for online video.
Making the videos is easy in the Flash interface because you are guided through the process. Go to the menu: File>Import>Import Video. The first question is: where is your flv file located. If you want to test video locally, you can browse to the video on your desktop. But if you do this, you will need to go into the Component Inspector later before you publish your Flash movie, and change the file path to where the flv is on the server once you have uploaded your flv video.
Component inspector - change the file path to server here if you used local file.
So the best way is to avoid using local files and instead have your flv file already uploaded so you can point to the path.
Best to have FLV file online and select its path on import so you don't have to readjust later in Component Inspector.
You can still test locally by pressing Cmd, Return (Control>Test Movie), but once you publish you won’t be able to test the swf/html files created until they are uploaded.
This is the only tricky step. The rest is just picking options for your Flash skin: colour, under or over video, which controls do you want. Then test and publish (checking Publish Settings to make sure the file size will be OK for your audience.
Once you hit “Publish,” three files will be created: swf, skin swf, and the html code you will need to add to your page to run the Flash. Integrate the html into your page, and upload all three file (because the flv should already be up!)
That’s all there is to it!
