In the Google Chrome browser and other modern browsers, you can embed the HTML5 <video> tag as follows:

<video>
  <source src="movie.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.42E01E, mp4a.40.2"' />
  <source src="movie.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8, vorbis"' />
</video>

Alternatively, you may use a single video format which makes the syntax very similar to the tag used below:

<video src="movie.webm"></video>

There are various ways that you can integrate <video> tag via HTML5, and we recommend that you check out the examples provided at HTML5rocks.com to get a better feel for how video can be embedded this way.

As you can see, multiple <source> tags can be used in general to include multiple container formats as fallback types for a variety of browsers. On Google TV, however, in order to minimize hardware requirements and software complexity, it is recommended that the container format MP4, combined with the H.264 video codec and the AAC audio codec, be used as this is the most widely adopted combination for encoding video content. Additionally, hardware acceleration of H.264 decoding is built into Google TV to ensure good performance on big screen devices.

The following code snippet shows a typical way of embedding a SWF file inside a web page:

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/.../swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0"
width="400"
height="400" >

<param name="movie" value="videoplayer.swf">
<param name="quality" value="high" >
<param name="LOOP" value="false">

<embed src="videoplayer.swf"
width="400"
height="400"
loop="false"
quality="high"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
</ embed >

</ object >

The <object> tag in this code is for general compatibility with the Internet Explorer browser, but on Google TV, since Chrome is the only available browser, the <embed> tag alone is sufficient.

The supported container formats for Flash Player include MP4, FLV, F4V, AVI, and ASF. For Google TV, we recommend the following combinations of container formats, video codec, audio codec, and caption format:

The following are guidelines for Google TV that you may keep in mind when encoding and tuning your video for Flash:

The standard way of playing back Flash video (i.e., FLV video files) in a video player via ActionScript is to instantiate a Video object:

/ AS3
var myVideo:Video = new Video();
addChild(myVideo);
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect(null);
var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
myVideo.attachNetStream(ns);
ns.play("http://yourserver.com/flash-files/MyVideo.flv");

However, this generic Video object comes with many features, like rotation, blendMode, alpha channel, filter, mask, etc., that may be overkill for a high resolution display (they also tend to result in less than ideal performance, especially on a device using a less-powerful CPU). Because of this, Adobe introduced a new StageVideo API to improve video rendering on high-resolution devices like Google TV.

You can implement the StageVideo object using the following code:

var v:Vector.<StageVideo> = stage.stageVideos;
var stageVideo:StageVideo;
if ( v.length >= 1 ) {
   stageVideo=v[0];
}

netConnection = newNetConnection();
netConnection.connect(null);
netStream = new NetStream(netConnection);

var v:Vector.<StageVideo> = stage.stageVideos;
if ( v.length >= 1 ) {
   varstageVideo:StageVideo=v[0];
   stageVideo.viewPort=new Rectangle(100,100,320,240);
   stageVideo.addEventListener(StageVideoEvent.RENDER_STATE,<callback>);
   stageVideo.attachNetStream(netStream);
}
netStream.play("MyVideo.f4v")

By introducing StageVideo object, Adobe has made a trade-off in favor of performance at the expense of certain features. For example, on Google TV, the StageVideo object does not have alpha property for transparency and you cannot play multiple StageVideo objects simultaneously. You can read more about the StageVideo object on Adobe’s website at http://goo.gl/qXWoV.

The Adobe Flash Platform offers a variety of protocols to support various applications that serve video over a network. These protocols include:

Depending on the nature of your applications and existing delivery infrastructure, you may want to choose your protocols appropriately. For example, you may want streaming video for real-time application or progressive download for faster playback or broadcast versus peer-to-peer video experiences. These options offer you a lot of flexibility and make it possible to develop applications that go beyond simple video playback.

Another aspect of your video delivery system over the Internet is that available bandwidth changes in real time throughout the time a video is playing back. For this reason, your delivery system needs to be smart enough to dynamically adjust bitrate.

On the server side, you could consider Adobe Flash Media Server technology, which offers adaptive bitrate capabilities as well as recovery during network outages.

It is important to optimize your video player. If your video player hogs too many CPU cycles, it may affect the frame rate of the video playback, or it may cause the UI to feel sluggish and unresponsive. Typically, excessive script execution and excessive rendering are often culprits for poor user experiences.

Here are some considerations to keep in mind when developing your video player: