Foundation Flash CS3 Video

In 2003, I was in Seattle getting ready to do a presentation on Flash video at Digital Design World. Jim Heid, the conference organizer, saw the title slide of the presentation and mentioned that I might be facing a rather tough crowd. I looked out over audience members, sized them up, and told Jim I had his back covered. He said he wasn’t too sure about that and pointed to the title on my screen: “QuickTime is dead.” Looking out into the darkened room, I watched about 200 people in the audience open their PowerBooks; hundreds of bright white Apple logos stared back at me. It was indeed going to be a tough crowd. Nobody really expected the stranglehold that Apple, Microsoft , and Real had on the web streaming market in 2003 to be broken. Y et by spring 2005, just 18 months after that present- tion, that is exactly what happened. Those three web video delivery technologies practically v- ished and were replaced almost entirely by Flash video. This is not to say QuickTime and Windows Media are dead technologies. They aren’t by a long shot, but when it comes to putting video on the Web, the Flash Player has rapidly become the only game in town. Before I get going, you have to understand how Apple, Microsoft, and Real “lost” the market.