Flashcomguru.com: Flash Media Encoder 2.5 Released, Adds H.264 Encoding

Flash Media Encoder 2.5 Released, Adds H.264 Encoding

Posted At : April 14, 2008 10:40 AM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: FMS , Tools

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 ;-)

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Anyone thats upgraded to FMS3 using FME? Just wondering if there are noticeable performance improvements with FMS3....whether it makes sense to upgrade.

# Posted By Andy | 4/14/08 3:11 PM

Has anyone already tried the new h.264 codec in Flash Media Encoder?
Well, I have, and I must say the quality is quite awful.
Same goes for the Quicktime Broadcaster, I wonder why these tools produce such crappy videos.
My benchmark is - unforunately - Windows Media Encoder, which produces so much better video.
I would love to hear feedback from other users, as I would love to use live encoding with h.264....

# Posted By thomas e. | 4/15/08 10:06 AM

I've tried it with good results. Maybe you could post some screenshots of yours?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 4/15/08 10:19 AM

While I haven't spent too much time playing with it, my initial impression was that if you have ample horsepower, your h.264 encoding would produce better results than VP6 for the same bitrate.

# Posted By Andy | 4/15/08 2:11 PM

Andy, you for sure have a point here. Encoding in bigger resolutions does take more resources than my mighty old P830 Dual Core can handle...
On my machine, framerate on PAL size encoding goes down to 12fps... same thing as wmv9 takes about 30% processor load.
I will investigate further with lower resolutions.
Would love to hear other user's experiences...

# Posted By thomas e. | 4/15/08 10:28 PM

Does anyone know how to start it up, seems like the install does add a startup icon.

# Posted By cyberthugin4life | 4/21/08 2:52 AM

Oh my god!

I think I just found out a major drawback (at least for me) while testing the new FME with h.264.
It seems that it is NOT POSSIBLE to record H.264 streams on FMS 3. Looks like you only can record on the server when you stream with flv. What stupid thing is this? I still hope I am wrong, has anyone found out about this?

# Posted By thomas e. | 4/24/08 7:27 PM

you are correct, you can currently not record in H.264 serverside. But FME can record it locally.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 4/24/08 7:44 PM

Well, thats very bad news. And really stupid from Adobe, I'd have to say. Any idea if this feature will be coming soon? And will the Wowza server be able to record h.264 server-side?

# Posted By thomas e. | 4/24/08 8:42 PM

i'm confident they'll be adding this feature

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 4/24/08 8:46 PM

Stefan,
do you have any idea in what timeframe this might happen?
Version 3.02, or more FMS 4.0....

# Posted By thomas e. | 4/25/08 4:36 PM

sorry no idea. I hope it's soon.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 4/25/08 5:13 PM

I hope that H264 recording feature will come soon. Why? because I use FMS to stop/record a stream that comes from FME and FME is running continuously. In other words I use FMS to control the record behaviour of the FME.

# Posted By twist | 5/21/08 11:17 AM

trying fme out trying to testing with flashwebtown.com when i try h264 got audio no video but works fine with VP6 get both video and audio any know were im going wrong

# Posted By Jay | 6/16/08 1:44 PM

you get no video where? On the receiving SWF?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 2:09 PM

no i can see the video and hear the sound in fme but when i try to watch the h.264 feed i can just hear the sound in flash media player no video just black screen when i stop fme change it to VP6 works perfect

# Posted By jay | 6/16/08 3:50 PM

so the video is missing from the SWF when you stream in H.264? OR what do you mean by Flash Media Player? Do you mean Flash Media Encoder?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 4:23 PM

in the frash media encoder i can see the live video from the tv card in the preview output window when i try to watch the stream i got black video screen, but just try on another pc working but that running flash player 9,0115,0 but other pc laptop running 9,0124,0 then just showing audio no video

# Posted By jay | 6/16/08 4:38 PM

might be easy this is the test stream rtmp://flashwebtown.com/live/streamtest

# Posted By jay | 6/16/08 4:46 PM

works great for me, but I am running 9.0.115

Maybe it's a bug with .124?

I think I'll watch this for a while :-)

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 4:55 PM

sound's a bit out of sync - i will try and test with .124

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 4:58 PM

the pc running flash media enocder is 115 winder if that could be why 124 not working maybe that needs to have it aswell not sure cant seem to find 115 flash player download just the latest

# Posted By jay | 6/16/08 5:01 PM

no I doubt that's what's causing this. I just tested with the labs player 10.0.1.128 and I get no video on that one either.
Let's take this to email for now. Can you email me please?
stefan at flashcomguru dot com

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 5:05 PM

one more thing - which server are you streaming over? Or which CDN?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 5:07 PM

urgh, I just had someone else test it for me and they couldn't play it with .115... go figure

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 6/16/08 5:17 PM

Jay, i had the same trouble. Found that 9.0.124 player update requires a FMS update to 3.0.1 in order in order to play h.264

# Posted By TC | 6/24/08 2:50 AM

Hi there,

while testing different encoding bitrates for live h.264 video, we encountered a strange problem:
Quality of h.264 video doesn't seem to change, even if we alter the bitrate quite dramastic.
Eg. 640x480 video looks quite the same, whether encoded with 350kbit or with 1000 kbit.
That can't be right, especially because the quality is always not great.
Any thoughts? Anybody can confirm this?

thanks
thomas

# Posted By thomas e. | 7/30/08 4:41 PM

thomas, all I can confirm is that this is not the case for me. When I use a lower bitrate to encode H.264 (or any other codec) I get deteriorated quality.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 7/30/08 8:44 PM

thanks Stefan for your answer.
We did really extensive testing, and always have these strange results. For example, when the camera moves from one side to the other, it's never a smooth movement, even though the encoder says it does 25fps....
Same with picture quality: for a 720 size format, it doesn't matter if we encode with 600kbit or 1500kbit, quality stays mostly the same. Filesize of course increases accordingly, but not quality. Are there some hidden settings we can try (such as, how many I-frames etc.?)

Regards

thomas

# Posted By thomas e. | 7/30/08 9:23 PM

Has anyone till date, has been able to encode h.264 with even a bad quality or still its not possible. I basically want to capture a video in H.264 through a Flash application and was wondering was it possible through this encoder.

# Posted By Nikhil | 8/5/08 8:10 PM

with Flash Media Encoder 2.5, you can encode in h.264.

# Posted By thomas e. | 8/5/08 8:26 PM

I was trying to use this encoder, but it asks me for a application path in the URL to be specified for streaming to the Flash media server. Does anyone have an idea what to use for the same and also which media server have you used?

# Posted By Nikhil | 8/13/08 7:36 PM

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