Flash vs. Windows Media: Looking at the Facts

 
Jul 24, 2006

by Simeon Bateman

Some of you may have seen Dan Rayburn's recent comparison of Flash and Windows Media Video formats (Flash vs. Windows Media: Choosing the Right Format) on StreamingMedia.com. The author did a pretty good job of sharing the strengths of both platforms. However, I have some problems with some of his facts.

The first problem I have is that Rayburn states that the adoption rate of Flash is somehow limited to the media and entertainment markets. He also states that Flash has really become hot in the last twelve months. If you see where Flash has made its biggest advances in the last year, then it is obvious where he takes his opinion from. He has seen that YouTube and Google Video both picked up Flash video as their preferred method of distribution, and he marks them as the only places using Flash video. To assume that these two giant media sites would choose an underdog medium when making their mark on the web is almost too silly to consider.

Almost in the same breath, Rayburn challenges that Flash video is dwarfed in the Enterprise market by WMF (Windows Media Format) Videos. I wonder if the author has ever seen Breeze or Captivate. These tools leverage the Flash video platform, allowing you to create customized training and presentation packages that can be deployed on a large scale. These tools are made for the Enterprise Market, and were created to fill a need that was not being met by the current tools (WMF, for example).

Further on in the article the author takes some time to compare penetration statistics. He states that 97.7% of web users have the Flash player installed, but poses the idea that a user having the player installed doesn't mean that they use it. All I really hear in that argument is that should a user come across a site using Flash video technologies, they don't even have to think twice about whether it will work. It just will, and that is not the case for all of the Window Media Video formats, even on the PC platform. That doesn't even take into consideration the growing number of Mac users. And although there is a Windows Media Player for OS X, it is a version behind and is not available as a Universal Binary Format for new Intel-based Macs.

When the author does actually talk about facts, such as the bit rate encoding of video and the availability of tools, he is dead on. Windows Media Format has Flash beat. However, although the facts are complete in that case, the comparisons are off. Let's look at an example that might be a little closer to home. When working with image files in Photoshop, we work with PSD files. These files contain all kinds of necessary layering information and extra data. Once we are done working with those files, we export them to jpegs and put them on our sites. When we next want to update our sites, we do not go to our jpegs and start editing; we go back to our PSD files that have all the special information in them. I consider an FLV file to be an end-user deliverable. It's not the piece you would edit to make changes to your Flash video application. Therefore, it's not surprising that there are not more FLV editors out there. For that matter, you can work with your video as a WMF file and release it to the world as an FLV file.

When all is said and done, I think the author did a pretty good job in comparing the two technologies when he kept them on level ground. I wholeheartedly agree that the most important deciding factor is to know your audience. If all your users are running Windows XP, then deploying video on your site as embedded video can be a good solution. If your users visit your site using a variety of browsers and platforms, Flash video may be a better fit. If your site requires you to create a custom or branded video experience, then you are much better off using Flash. So take that with you as you begin your next video project and plan accordingly.

Flash vs. Windows Media: Choosing the Right Format

Simeon Bateman is the director of IT at Business Transitions LLC, where he is responsible for all software development and server maintenance. Simeon has been working with ColdFusion daily since version 4.0 and is also the Portland ColdFusion User Group Manager. His adventures into untested waters with ColdFusion and Flex are catalogued on his blog at http://www.simb.net/blog/.

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