Stream Cloud Files with FlowPlayer Plugins

Streaming with Cloud Files was Decommissioned on July 31, 2022.

Disclaimer: As of January 12, 2021, excluding the China variant of Flash, the Flash executable has a built-in kill switch that prevents it from playing Flash files. As of February 2021, all major browsers block Flash and cannot play it. Only IE11, niche browser forks, and some browsers built for China plan to continue support.

This article shows you how to upload and stream videos from Cloud Files by using the Akamai Content Delivery Network (CDN). Using FlowPlayer as the streaming video player enables you to get the streaming technology and web experience that customers are looking for without having to develop their own Flash players.

You can set up your video for streaming by using the following steps:

1. Upload your file to Cloud Files through the API or the Cloud Control Panel.

   If your video file is more than 5GB, use our large-object support.

2. Download the Akamai Advanced FlowPlayer Provider plugin. The system requires this plugin to play your video on the Akamai network.

3. Upload the FlowPlayer plugins to your Cloud Files account or on a server where the internet can access them.

4. Request your streaming URL by performing a HEAD on your object.

5. Use your streaming URL to serve your content.

The following steps show you how to embed your video with FlowPlayer in your website code:

1. Upload all of the FlowPlayer components to a container.
2. Call the flowplayer.js file by using a <script> tag to include it in the HTML.
3. Link the flowplayer.css stylesheet to the Player frame.
4. Make any configuration changes to the FlowPlayer object.
5. Add in the .swf player object so that the player controls the .swf object and sets the source for the video.