If you download streaming video content from the web (like YouTube videos, CNN news clips, etc), chances are that you have piled up tons of Flash Video (flv) files on your desktop.
Unfortunately, these FLV files cannot play directly inside the web browser or the standalone Flash Player and you need to download an additional software like RIVA in order to watch the FLV videos.
But the future of these third-party FLV players may be in trouble as Adobe has just introduced an all-new Adobe Media Player that can play FLV videos - you can drag and drop the FLV video file over the Adobe Media Player and the video will be begin to play instantly. The videos can also be viewed in Full Screen Mode.
Get Adobe Media Player installer here. Release Notes in PDF are available here.
Everything else you wanted to know about Adobe Media Player {FAQ}
The FLV files are associated with Adobe Media Player so you can even double-click the FLV file on your hard-drive to play it in Adobe Media Player.
This is a pre-release version and does not support H.264 encoded videos. Only Flash video encoded in Flash 8 [On2 VP6] and Sorenson Spark and H.263 can currently be played in Adobe Media Player.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/10/standalone-flv-player-for-watching.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Almost all popular codec packages available on net support FLV. K-Lite, Vista Codec Pack,CCC,VLC. If you can play XVID/DIVX or MOV, you can play FLV. There's no need to install any additional packages. Why did you fail to mention that?
Written on 2/10/07 7:29 PM
I always use VLC, but you can't rewind or fast-forward FLV files. Regardless, I'm not going to install 2 more programs; you need Adobe Air (at 10MB) installed before you can install Adobe Media Player(??MB).
Written on 2/10/07 11:33 PM
It might be a good idea for me as I do have few flv files lying with me, but if I can watch it in the browser, I am not sure if I will use this or not.
Written on 4/10/07 7:08 PM