Q:Adobe Media Encoder (AME) and H.264 for Flash

Question

Hi Have been doing a lot of research on obtaining best quality video for use by the Flash Player. Since the latest Player(version 9 and up) supports the H.264 codec I assume thats the way to go. However am confused as to which output application and options to use for the best quality. Have used open source Handbrake with mixed results. Now have decided to use Adobe's CS4 media encoder. In AME you can out put 'F4V's which use the H.264 codec OR you can output H.264 directly which creates an .M4P file. Can someone explain the difference since they both are using the H.264 codec? Can you also simply output .MP4's and change the name from 'myvideo.mp4' to 'myvideo.f4v'?

Answer 1

Both uses same video codec for the video stream but the container is different i.e the data is stored differently in both of the format so you can not get an F4V file by just renaming MP4 to F4V nevertheless Flash player (version 9 or higher) supports both of them.