tracking video files - embedding flv to swf

we have a mRSS feed that contains video information. e.g <video fileTitle"testing" fileurl="http://www.example.com开发者_StackOverflow/test.flv> when we send this out users are using their own player and the video file url is included in the feed, so there is no way to add analytics to this. unless we load the flv via a swf file. for example: <video fileTitle"testing" fileurl="http://www.example.com/loader.swf?fileurl=test.flv>

so my question is if a player is expecting a flv file is it ok to give them a swf file with a flv preloaded in it? Does it matter that it is a swf file? if it doesn't matter then I can add analytics code to the swf file and then server the flv to the users who are connecting to the file.

Thanks in advance.

You could use server-side code to send analytics events when the RSS feed is requested, and/or when FLV files are loaded from the web server (forward your FLVs through a PHP proxy script, for example).

The analytics code won't be the same as code gathered from clients, and the server will have to do extra work, but you should at least be able to collect some data, though perhaps not everything you are interested in.

I would say that the answer is no.

Assuming that when you say "users are using their own player", that can be different Flash based video players, like for example some may be using JW Player, some may use Flowplayer and others may use their own custom made players, then providing a swf file in the fileurl won't work.