I've just stumbled over this in the release notes for player 10 Beta:

File Reference runtime access -- Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.

That's yet more big news. Saving actual files locally? Load files into the app without going through a server first? WOW! Combine this with video downloads and P2P...

Hank Williams even thinks that this technology could kill CDNs. I'm not sure if I agree with that totally, but it will have an impact no doubt. It remains to be seen how restrictive or open this new API really is. But we will have fun over the coming months, that much is clear.

Good morning coders, and what a morning it is. There's some huge, huge, huuuge news. Did I mention how huge this is?

Flash Player 10 Beta has just dropped on Labs and while the most hyped features center around 3D support and custom filters (amongst other things), there's also a goodiebag full of toys for the audio/video crowd.
How do you fancy some UDP? Peer to peer? Speex audio codec support (finally!)?

Let's dig a little deeper. The new rich media features in Flash Player 10 beta cannot be leveraged until the next version of Flash Media Server ships (this is likely to be a dot release to go hand in hand with the Player 10 release). However you can apply to take part in the FMS prerelease program and test these features before they are publicly released.

The next version of FMS and Player 10 will introduce a new protocol, RTMFP, which stands for Real Time Messaging Flow Protocol. This is a low latency, UDP based protocol that is based on Amicima's MFP protocol. Amicima was aquired by Adobe in 2006.

It sounds likely that FMS will act like a switchboard to connect various Flash clients into an optional peer to peer mode, offering high quality, low latency audio and video communications, and thereby sidestepping any bandwidth flowing through the server itself. Did I mention higher quality and lower latency? Think Skype inside a Flash application. Oh yes, I'll take two of those please.

In addition to the new protocol there's a new audio codec, Speex, to go with it. And what a great choice this codec is since Speex is open-source, as well as patent and royalty-free. It will be a revelation compared to Nellymoser, the only audio encoder that's currently present in the Flash Player.

There are tons of other exciting new features in Player 10 (enhanced text support - yeah), you can check a list here.

Oh and btw, Player 10, codenamed Astro, is really making some noise with its new sound features.

Rock on.

Interesting. Apart from the cool 360 degree video demo I blogged about earlier today, there also seem to be new features on the horizon for Flash Player and FMS when it comes to support for multiple bitrates and seamless switching between them depending on network conditions.

Kevin Towes presented on FMS at NAB recently and towards the end of his talk showed some sneak peaks of possibly upcoming new features in Flash and FMS. The experience he demoed shows an absolutely seamless switching capability between video feeds, or between multiple bitrates inside one file. It is not clear if it is the former or the latter, but in any case it sounds like that this is coming and it will make moving between bitrates of a single clip much easier and smoother. So smooth that you can't even hear a break in the audio.

Unfortunately the direct link to Kevin's talk does not seem to work, but if you go to http://tv.adobe.com and search for 'Kevin Towes' you will find the clip. It's the first result that comes up in the search and the sneak peak is towards the end of the presentation.

Forget spinning cubes with video stuck on their sides and instead check out the demo below. From Immersive Media, same the guys that brought you street view on Google Maps, comes an innovative new way to navigate 360 degrees inside a live playing video. How is it delivered? Flash of course.

Check out this demo. Once the main content starts to play you can click inside the video and drag your mouse into the direction you want to view. Make sure you check out the snowboarders at about 1 minute in - and follow them as they go over the kicker.

There are more demos here.

The next version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro (I still haven;t figured out why they had to name it Acrobat) has been announced and will be available towards the end of the month. The full press release is here.

As you may know, Connect is built on top of FMS and leverages most of its features. Presenters can also run a special version of the Flash Player which features screen sharing capabilities, amongst other things.

I've just had a look onto the job board of my forums and there seem to be plenty of job requests with few or no replies. Granted, some of the jobs posted look a bit - let's say - less professional, but on the other hand there's companies like stickam posting flexible on-site and telecommute positions. But no replies. Did the developers reply directly or nor at all? I'm not sure.

Wowza and Red5 are also in heavy demand, but again with few or no replies. So if you are a developer stuck in an agency building Flash banners then ask yourself what else you could be doing...?

Another good place to promote yourself for free in front of the who's who of FMS is my mailing list, that's in case you are looking for FMS related work. Potential employers are also encouraged to post their jobs there.

Streamingmedia.com have posted a video tutorial covering Wowza Media Server. In it Richard Lanham covers installation, video on demand, live restreaming, extending Wowza, monitoring, and customer examples.

Check it out.

Big day today. On one hand it's the second leg of the UEFA Champion's League semi final between Chelsea and Liverpool. On the other hand it's the first time I wanted to make a purchase for DRM protected streaming video. Here's how it went (and I can tell you know that I'm NOT watching the game...).

The background to this: I am a Sky subscriber, so I receive some TV channels via satellite. However I do not pay for the Sports package since I am generally not interested in that. Tonight's match however is only available on Sky Sports.

There are situations where I needed a copy of FMS2, but of course the official download page is no longer available since the release of Flash Media Server 3. Or is it?
Updaters to the rescue. It's a little know fact that all FMS2 Updaters are actually full versions of the product, not merely patches. So if you need a copy of FMS2 simple head over to Flash Media Server Support Center and download it.

Yes you can, as I'm now on Twitter. Note that there's more off topic chit chat flying around than on my blog but I will try and post some useful info at times. Sometimes. Ok, rarely.

Twitter is a funny one, isn't it? I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep it up. Is it a total waste of time or useful communication tool?

I'm not sure if you have ever paid to watch a video on the internet and even if you have I'd take a guess and predict that it was a rare occasion. It may therefore come to no surprise to you that demand for such a service seems to be quite limited. I personally wouldn't really know what site to turn to if I wanted to watch a full length movie that's just been released on DVD - sure such services may exist but they are definitely keeping a low profile.
I've heard that iTunes sells TV episodes (yet I can watch tons of stuff free on iPlayer so this seems pointless and it's usually more expensive than the boxed version!) but do they shift many units? I doubt it somehow. Who really wants a TV experience on their computer? I don't, I prefer the TV experience on my TV. What I could imagine myself doing is purchasing HD content for my Apple TV (which I love) once Apple finally gets their act together and provides the facility for me to hand over my hard earned cash.

It should also come to no surprise then that Brightcove just announced their discontinuation (which in normal English means they will no longer offer) of their Pay Media Functionality. In case you didn't know, Pay Media allowed 'publishers to sell or rent Windows media video titles directly to consumers via a Brightcove player'. According to Brightcove nobody really made use of the feature, and less than 1% of Brighcove customers are affected by the axing of the service. So out of all Brightcove publishers, less than one percent thought they could get punters to pay for a DRM'ed video. No tears shed here then.

And whatever happened to Joost, is anyone still watching that? Apparently it allows me to watch what I want, when I want. Hmmm, somehow that never worked for me and I could find nothing on Joost that I wanted to see...

So what's the deal here then? Do consumers really want to pay and consume video content over the internet? Or do they only like to consume, but not pay? Or maybe, are the offerings which would make consumers open their wallets simply not existent today?

In my opinion it's devices such as the Apple TV that lead the way. Choose, click, pay (now in the US and soon elsewhere), right from the comfort of your sofa, then watch on a nice big screen. I don't want to sitting front of my computer to watch a movie, even if it was free and HD. What matters to the crowd is convenience. The iPlayer experience in the living room would be a winner, hooked up to an easy way to pay. All that's left is for someone to build it.

Here comes a little gotcha that could potentially have you pulling your hair out for a fair few hours, and some more once you realise how simple the 'fix' is.
If you are streaming files from FMS (be it version 2 or 3) then you may have made use of its Virtual Directory feature. This allows you to use a key (basically a named mapping) to point FMS at different storage locations for video files.

For example you could configure a key name of 'myvideos' and map this to a location of C:\myfiles\videostorage. The tag in vhost.xml would look like this:

Then every time a stream is requested via NetStream.play the server will look for the myvideos key in the stream path and if found locate the appropriate video file inside /videostorage (or if required in a subfolder).

Adobe have just released version 2.5 of the Flash Media Encoder, a free live video encoder which connects to Flash Media Server 3 or a compatible CDN to broadcast live Flash video streams in high quality.
Apart from H.264 support the software also supports the commercial AAC Audio Encoder Plug-in by MainConcept, rounding off the capability to deliver high quality live webcasts in Flash.

More details are available on the product page. I'm hoping to set up a sample stream sometime soon - I just need to wrap up half a dozen or so projects first ;-)

It's amazing how unscrupulous (and naive) some folks are these days. What's the matter with Flvmagazine.com (no need to go there by the way, the site is rubbish) publishing content that's blatantly scraped off other websites? And not only that, but after stealing the content they don't even give credit to the original author.
Simon just spotted one of his tutorials on Flvmagazine's website. I had a little dig around - and now I wonder if Lee Brimelow knows that some of his content is also being pirated. Who else?

Flvmagazine (by Flvhosting.com) - the company which advertised on this site once and never paid their bill - should get a grip.

Fabio 'Encoding Wizard' Sonnati has outdone himself once again and published an HD resolution video clip on his site. What's stunning about this example is the low bitrate of only 500kbit.sec, while maintaining an amazing quality.

Double click the video to go full screen. Nice job Fabio!