Remember that Captivate was originally designed to create Adobe Flash (.swf) files that can be played back by the Adobe Flash Player plugin. In 2006, Adobe (formerly Macromedia) added video support to Flash. At that time, the Flash Player supported only a specific Flash video format: the .flv
format (flv stands for Flash Video). In 2007, some restrictions of the .flv
format led to the development by Adobe of the .f4v
Flash video format. Today, the Flash Player supports both the .flv
and .f4v
video formats. The Adobe Media Encoder is used to convert any kind of video to the .flv
or .f4v
file format.
With the arrival of HTML 5, it is now possible for a web browser to play a video (or audio) file natively, without the help of an external plugin such as the Flash Player. Unfortunately, the industry has not yet decided what video format/codec should be used for HTML 5 video playback. As of today, it looks like two formats are emerging, the .mp4
format and the .webm
format...