Flash Tip: SWF vs. Video Publishing for Large Content

In another tip, we discussed the benefits of using animated GIFs vs. the benefits of using Flash SWF files for publishing small-size/short content to the web or an interactive application. But what about for larger/longer Flash movies? An animated GIF would definitely be too large to provide any sort of benefit, not to mention the lack of audio available...but there is the option to publish to QuickTime Movie format (.mov, some upgrades also allow the option to publish to .avi or .wmv format), which could be equally advantageous.

We're going to ask the same questions as before, but for different reasons.

• Does using video lower my file size significantly? While image content is usually larger than Flash vector content in terms of filesize, you can actually benefit from using video formats when you're working with longer, larger movies, especially movies with audio. While Flash can compress its output as much as possible in FLA format, video can offer a range of codecs that may allow you to bring your filesize down to the smallest possible while still maintaining video and audio quality.
• Does my movie require user input? This is the same as in smaller formats--if you need user interaction, you're just going to have to deal with the larger file size and stick with a Flash SWF.
• Will the majority of my target demographic have the Flash player? This one's actually rather tricky. You have to worry about whether or not your target demographic will have the Flash player (or would be willing to download it), but there's also the matter of video compression codecs. While most browsers will play the most common types of video by default, if you're using a compression codec to reduce your filesize, your end-user may not have the required codec on their computer to decompress that for viewing. If you're using a common codec like Windows Media Video (.wmv), then you're more likely to have success, but say if you're straying down a lesser-used path with something like Cinepak codecs, then you might have a higher percentage of people who can't view your video than you would if you stayed with SWF format.
• Am I using audio? The advantage here is that video can play audio the same as Flash does, but as stated in the first question, video has the option of compressing and reducing the amount of space taken up to store the audio data in your file, which may end up reducing your file size significantly.

I prefer to use video myself, even when producing content in Flash, but that's just an individual quirk that comes from a fondness for digital video editing in Adobe Premiere. Premiere is also a good program to use to take the video produced by Flash and convert it into a different format with different compression.