Flashcomguru.com: Justin.tv - 24/7 Live Streams in Flash

Posted At : April 13, 2007 9:25 AM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: FMS

I'm going to be proven right: live Flash video is going to be huuuge this year. Take Justin.tv as an example - this guy wear a webcam strapped to his head and he does this around the clock. Looking behind the scenes it appears that the feed is once again courtesy of Vitalstream (any reason why these folks don't drop me a press release when stuff like this goes live?) and while it's being hammered with traffic you do occasionally see a message of servers being full. I suspect this is to do with how much bandwidth Justin can afford to rent - which poses the question: why has nobody from the CDN space stepped in and offered this chap some free capacity? Surely this sort of thing is great publicity if it was powered by XYZ in big letters. But what do I know about business...?
So the point being is this: live Flash video will be big this year (and next), not as big as on demand footage a la YouTube was (and still is) last year but it will become very popular.

More and more end users will be able to broadcast *live* (stickam is showing the way to some extend) rather than upload pre-recorded clips, and Flash Media Server (version 3 coming up later this year) will play a big role in making these apps happen. Throw Flex and Apollo into the mix and you'll be seeing some neat applications popping up. And why not - broadcasting live in Flash is so easy. Get yourself set up with a server, or rent some third party FMS space (see the ads to your right for some options), plug in your cam and off you go, instant webcasts. The new Flash Media Encoder makes this even easier and I'm myself building more live Flash video apps these days than on demand stuff. I'm also planning to run a few webcasts myself this year, maybe organize a little 'chat-with-stefan' feature. Scary thought, I know...

At the same time we'll be seeing more live webcasts on mainstream (no pun intended) sites where previously such events would be planned long and hard and when they actually happened turning out to be quite boring. But plug some live video into a rich Flash/Flex UI, make these events less formal and you'll see quick adoption both on the broadcasting side as well as with end users. Now if only FMS became a little more affordable we could be onto another mini video revolution, similar to what cameras on mobile phones did to instant news coverage. Just mark my words: live Flash video will be big over the next 12-18 months and be pushing into a space which was previously occupied by our older cousins, Windows Media and Real.

Justin's just gone to bed by the way, time for me to get some work done ;-)
Feel free to leave me some comments on this topic.

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I've been preaching this for years, but with FME being released, I think this year, and the next and so-forth we are going to see an exponential growth of both live and on-demand Flash Video. Adobe overcame one of their major hurdles (for live video) with FME. The SPARK codecs in Flash player was great for conferencing but just couldn't hang with WMV for broadcasting live events, sports, etc... The On2 codec's offered a comparable solution to WM, but at the price tag of $999 for the live broadcaster courtesy of On2; it just wasn't lucrative for companies. The $0 price tag of FME gives companies no reason to not go Flash video, shy of the price tag of FMS or the upsales of FVSS. The debate of this though is price versus ubiquitous platform. It's difficult to say if marketing at Adobe is going to buckle on the price with FMS 3.0, but I it's not like the developers aren't being vocal on this matter too. I'm confident they have their reasons...

I could ramble on, but I should probably shut up now.

# Posted By Brad Outlaw | 4/13/07 3:58 PM

Hello Justin,
It appears that I'm reselling Vitalstream here
in France, and i confirm Live flash is
going to be big (at least in regards of the
requests i'm having).
Anyone interrested could contact me at:
dwetzel at atanar.net
Best regards

# Posted By wetzel | 4/13/07 5:24 PM

We are also running a 24/7 live streaming website utilizing flash video. FME is still notthing near perfect, but it works. What are people using for remote management of FME for instance? Since FME can't be run in Windows Remote Desktop nor in pcAnywhere we are using a KVM switch with an IP extender. I wonder if there is a software solution that works with FME. Also there is no autostart option. Windows Media Encoder is still some steps ahead and I wonder if Windows Media will overshadow flash video when WPF/E gets released.

# Posted By Jan Pies | 4/14/07 12:27 PM

Hi Jan,
check out http://www.progettosinergia.com/flashvideo/flashvi...
and also sit tight for FME updates - I'm pretty sure that it will not remain a version 1 for very long as there's clear demand for such a tool.

# Posted By Stefan | 4/14/07 8:01 PM

Thanks for the link Stefan, I didn't know autostart was so easy to implement with FME and VB. After some initial restarts I was now able to let FME run for about 2 weeks without any user interaction. We also considered a Digital Rapids solution, but that would have costed about 20,000 euros more than our current solution with FME and an Osprey card.

# Posted By Jan Pies | 4/15/07 11:04 AM

for those interrested we (vitalstream)are broadcasting in flash live the segolene royal camp
http://http-r2.vitalstreamcdn.com/interneto_vitals...

# Posted By wetzel | 4/22/07 7:24 PM

Yep damn right the future is FMS. On that note am having problems listing current users broadcasting live in a list box and have if clickable. any thoughts or examples?? users have to login in broadcast with a username by the way.
Thank U.

# Posted By b_in | 4/27/07 12:34 AM

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