FLV was originally developed by Macromedia, which was later purchased by Adobe. For years, the FLV format was the de facto standard for the distribution of video content on the Internet, until the format was increasingly replaced by HTML5 video and WebM. This was due to the lack of support for mobile platforms for the format and extensive security problems of the Flashplayer.

The container format was introduced with the Falshplayer version 6 and used the VP6 or Sorenson Spark codec at the beginning. Later the H.264 video codec and HE-AAC audio codec were added with Flashplayer version 9. It is also possible to embed Flash video files in a SWF file.

When converting a video to FLV format, a very strong compression is performed, which can lead to poor results if the source material is poor.

Advantages:

- easy integration into existing websites

Disadvantages:

- rapidly declining spread

- proprietary format

- severe restrictions in further processing