Waldo Smeets .com

There is a lot of new Flash related information on the Macromedia site. First of all there is a new video exporter with updated Media Components available from the new Flash Video Resources section at DevNet. Then there is the Macromedia Flash Video Streaming Service announcement  and the new Flash Video Gallery. Somewhere hidden on the site, there’s also been an update of the Flash Player Penetration numbers. There’s also a new article on Using Flex to Build Your Struts Apps.

The new version of the Flash Video Exporter for Flash Pro does not only contain bug fixes, but also introduces two small new features. It adds support for 2-pass encoding and thus greatly improved image quality. Another new feature is that video length information is now included in encoded files and this information is automatically detected by the updated Media Components. This should really improve your video workflow. I myself am very enthousiastic about it, because this will make it much easier for me to do my demos; I had to remember all video lengths for each movie I used during presos!).

I am very pleased with the new Flash Player Penetration numbers. Flash Player 6 now (well, end of September) has reached over 90% penetration. And in the only one month that Player 7 was available it was installed on average on 10% of the machines connected to the internet. You can read the entire report at http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/.

Unfortunately I have not really looked into the Video Streaming Service announcement. However, I’d love to hear what you think about it.