How can I make my FLV stream better?

Dec 27, 2010

I have a flash video that's about 15 minutes and almost 100 mb. It's on the 7th slide in my course. When I publish my course and view it locally, it's fine. I view my course, I get to the 7th slide, and everything runs like I want. But if I upload my course to our LMS, and view it as a learner would, when I get to the video slide all I see is a black screen. I guess the video's trying to load, but maybe it's just too big? I have a pretty fast internet connection, but I've never gotten it to play right. I'm worried because some of our audience has slower connections, so I don't think they'll ever be able to see the video. Is there a way to get this to work?

4 Replies
Bob Lander

You could stream the FLV content but that would require Flash streaming server software, which can cost a lot. Here are some alternative ideas that can help:


  • Make the frame size of the video as small as you can. Reducing its dimensions will reduce the file size, and that can only help. Articulate Video Encoder gives you some good options for frame size, and you can also set your own custom size if you like. The smaller you can make it, the quicker it will load.

  • It would also help to divide the video up into pieces, say 1 or 2 minutes each. If you can spread the videos throughout the course then that way the audience won't have to wait for one gigantic file to load.

  • It can also help a lot to use a preloader like this one or this one. Especially if you divide your movie up and put a few regular (non-video) slides in between.

Bob Lander

Hi Cindy. Yeah, you could use a web object for the video but you'd still need special server software to stream it. I believe a plain web server alone won't cut it. The corporate IT dept at my company streams certain WMV's from special servers, using custom server software. We add videos like that as web objects in Articulate Presenter.

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