There’s a difference between progressive and streaming video. Do you know what it is? It’s confusing to say the least. The good news is that Adobe has a nice guide to telling the differences.

Here’s a summary.

Progressive Downloading

Pros and Cons

Keeping the video external and separate to the SWF file offers a number of benefits over embedded video, including the following:

* Easy to update: It’s relatively easy to add or change content independently of the video player and without the need to republish the SWF file.
* Small SWF file size: Your SWF file can remain very small for fast page loads and the video can be delivered when the user requests it.
* Better performance: Because the FLV and SWF files are separate, the performance and results of your video playback will typically be better. Issues such as the lack of sync between the fps rate of the video and the fps rate of the SWF file will no longer be a problem.

These benefits apply to both progressive download and streaming video. They are compelling enough to warrant that embedded video should only be used as a last resort.

When comparing progressive download to streaming video, there’s really only one benefit to progressive download: You don’t need streaming server software to deliver the video. Progressive download video can be served from any normal web server. For example, it can be served off the same machine that is running Apache or IIS and serving your HTML pages.

Streaming Video

Pros and Cons

The advantages of streaming Flash Video from Flash Communication Server are numerous:

* Fast start: Streaming FLV files is the fastest way to start playing any video on the web.
* Advanced video control: Features such as bandwidth detection, quality-of-service monitoring, automatic thumbnail creation, and server-side playlists can only be found in streaming video.
* More efficient use of network resources: Customers who pay for their video hosting or bandwidth by the amount that is transferred benefit from streaming video because only the bits that the client views are transferred.
* Secure media delivery: Because the streamed media is not saved to the client’s cache, users cannot rifle through their temporary Internet files folder to get the video or MP3 file. In addition, Flash Communication Server supports SSL encryption of streams, providing the tightest security possible.
* Minimal use of client resources: Streaming reduces memory and disk space significantly because the client does not need to download the entire file.
* Tracking, reporting, and logging capabilities: Because progressive download is just a “hit on a file,” you cannot extract any statistics about video usage—for example, how long the video was viewed; whether the user navigated backward, forward, or paused the video; how many times the user played the video; whether the user left the web page before the video completed playing; and so on. Streaming enables you to capture these important statistics.
* Full seek and navigation: Viewers can immediately seek to any point in the video and have it start playing immediately. The streaming server immediately delivers the requested video and the user doesn’t have to wait until the entire video is downloaded before navigating to a particular mark. This makes streaming a great solution for longer playing videos or applications such as video blogging, where you may want to jump into the video at a specific point rather than requiring the viewer to watch it from the beginning.
* Deep interactivity: The precise stream control found in streaming video enables developers to create extensive interaction in their videos. For example, streaming video provides the ability to switch camera angles, have one video spawn another video, or switch seamlessly to alternate endings.
* Live video: Streaming provides the ability to deliver live video and audio from any connected webcam or digital video camera.
* Video capture and record: In addition to live streaming, Flash Communication Server gives you the ability to record video either in conjunction with the live stream (for example, archiving an event) or on its own (for example, video messaging).
* Multiuser capabilities: In addition to live one-to-many streaming, Flash Communication Server enables multiuser streaming of audio and video for the creation of video communication applications.

Although streaming video may be perceived as being more difficult than progressive download, both methods are actually extremely similar: They both use the same components and the same ActionScript commands. The key difference is that streaming video helps developers enjoy greater control over the video stream.

The only potential drawback with streaming video is that it requires special server software. Just as a robust data application requires you to install an application server in addition to your web server, robust media delivery applications require a streaming server in addition to the web server. For streaming Flash Video you must use Flash Communication Server. It is the only software that can stream audio, video, and real-time data to Flash Player.