8.3 Video & Flash

Video formats
When videos are produced they are usually encoded into a particular format. This means that to play them back you'll need to have the corresponding decoder installed on your computer. Perhaps when you've tried to pay a video you've been asked to install a codec. This is the decoder that you need to playback the file.

Some common video file formats are: AVI, WMV, MOV and MPG, you've probably heard of some of these before. When you create and embed or upload a video into your course, you'll need to consider which formats your students are likely to be able to play back easily. If all your students are using Windows operating system, then it's a safe bet that they'll be able to playback AVI and WMV files.

If some of your students are using a unix based operating system (such as Ubuntu), they'll need to install an extension to their browser to be able to playback WMV, AVI and some other video files.

Students will need to install Quicktime to playback MOV files, whether they are using Windows or other operating system.

So just because a video you've uploaded to your course will play perfectly well on your computer, doesn't mean it will on the systems your students are using. Before you decide on a particular video format, it's worthwhile finding out what video formats will play on the computer your students are likely to be using to access your course. Otherwise you might find a lot of complaints from your students.

One format that is said to be installed on over 97% of the worlds computers (so is likely to cover the computer your students use) is Flash Video (FLV). We'll look at this next.