Question

I want to display videos using Flash (for older, non-HTML5 video browsers). This is possible:

• using flv video files since Flash version 7
• and with h264 video files and high-def since Flash version 10.

So I’d like to first try the version 10 variant, and if that is not available, try the version 7 variant (I don’t care for browsers with no Flash installed, or version < 7). Also note that I have two different swf media players for each case (don’t know if there is a single one that would work with both formats in all cases).

If possible, this should happen without Javascript. Otherwise, using swfobject would be ok, however, I don’t know how to use it for this case.

So far I have tried to have two nested <object> tags, the outer one containing the Flash 10 media player, for playing the mp4 file, and the inner one containing the Flash 7 media player, for playing the flv file. But this does not work for browsers with a Flash player version between 7 and 9, since the failure doesn’t happen at the browser level, because there is a Flash player installed. The failure happens inside the swf media player that simply doesn’t do anything when the necessary version 10 video playback support is missing from the Flash player plugin.

Answer 1

I don’t think you have a way to deal with Flash versions unless you use Javascript. You can try this, in a <script> tag:

var flashVersion = swfobject.getFlashPlayerVersion();

if (flashVersion['major'] >= 10){
    /* Embed HD version */
} else if (flashVersion['major'] >= 7) {
    /* Embed flv version */
}

Source