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.
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 ;-)

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....
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...
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?
do you have any idea in what timeframe this might happen?
Version 3.02, or more FMS 4.0....
Maybe it's a bug with .124?
I think I'll watch this for a while :-)
Let's take this to email for now. Can you email me please?
stefan at flashcomguru dot com
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
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
We want offer both a high and low bit rate live streams being captured from the same camera at the same time.
However Adobe have announced that an upcoming release of FMS will support multibitrate streaming and I am sure they will release the tools (such as an updated FME) to go with it.
Modes: VP6, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / NellyMoser, mono, 22050 Hz, 44kbps
(basically the lowest of any watchability)
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = Perfect
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Perfect
Modes: H264, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 32kbps
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = ONCE in a blue moon it will play with audio in sync. Rarely. Picture stutters occasionally. Leaning out the proc's gets a bit better, but cpu use maxes at 30%
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Perfect, but the audio sounds terrible at such a low rate.
Modes: H264, 320x240 100kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 48kbps
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = forget it, audio is way ahead.
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Either audio goes out of sync or the picture stutters often.
Modes: H264, 320x240 200kbps 25fps / MP3, mono, 22050 Hz, 32kbps
Compaq EVO Windows 2K P4 1.6GHz = Nice four or five frames a second.. They look nice, but you cant watch that way.
Compaq SR1610nx XP Sempron 1.8Ghz = Picture holds up, but again, such low end audio.
Synopsis, allow the mixing of other audio codecs with the .h264 video in .flv encaptured format?
Of course I see the obvious solution, buy a quad core, but I have a gut feeling (without knowing anything about the encapsulation limitations of .flv) that improvements will be made to the flash media encoder in the future.
The ceiling of priority seems to be 30 % cpu usuage even on my 800mhz dual P3.
Either way, impressive app, and right now, until vlc fixes its own .flv bugs, the best transcoder/streamer out there.
Almost makes you want to buy Adobe Flash CS4.
The CPU runs consistently at 80-90% to encode the stream. The machine is running XP Pro with Dual Core Pentium 1.8GHz and 2Gig Ram. I've tried the encoding on other machines with similar processing power and have the same results. But that's not my problem.
The problem is that after 12-15 hours of steady encoding the encoder starts to lag drastically and eventually get to the point where I have to manually restart the application to refresh it and get it working again. Is there a cache that's filling up or something? Any ideas will greatly help me figure this out.
In FME we don’t suggest users to use a setting or machine in which CPU usage of machine goes above 75%.
H264 encoder takes little more time in encoding frames because of its high compression rate. If machine is slow then this time tends to increase gradually and you will start seeing noticeable lag between Input and Output streams.
In order to reduce this gap please use higher configuration machine like 4 core machine.
If you are using H264 Main then try using H264 base profile because H264 Main profile takes more CPU and gives high quality output.
Also I will suggest you to please use latest version of FMLE which is 3.0.1 in which we have done little more optimization in time of encoding.
Here are the settings I'm using that give me the quality I want. These settings pin the CPU at around 70-80% and the encoding more or less stalls completely after l2 hours or less.
Device: Axis Media Capture Driver
Format: H.264 or VP6 (same result with either)
Bit Rate: 350
Size: 640x480
FPS: 15 (30 gives same result)
Audio: MP3, Mono, 22050Hz, 48 kbps
I DO NOT save to a .flv file
If I can change anything to get FME to encode continuously and smoothly for weeks without rebooting, that's my goal.
Please try with FMLE 3.0.1. Also if possible please send me FMLE session logs and FMLE log file. To enable logging please follow following steps:
1. Goto Installation directory of FMLE i.e. "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Live Encoder 3".
2. Open conf\config.xml file.
3/ Change value of Logs tag to true as
<logs>
<enable>true</enable>
<path></path>
</logs>
4. Save the changes.
5. Then launch FMLE.
6. Start encoding.
7. Wait till the time issue occurs.
8. Stop Encoding and close FMLE.
9. GoTo "My Videos" folder
10. Send me stats folder and latest FMLEsession log file to my email neha@adobe.com
Thanks,
Neha
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:43:23 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:43:23 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Unexpected error encountered in encoding process.
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Audio Encoding Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Session Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Unpublish.Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Connected to FMS/3,0,2,217
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:24 : Primary - Network Command: onBWDone
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Publish.Start
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:45:25 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Unexpected error encountered in encoding process.
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Audio Encoding Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Session Stopped
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Unpublish.Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:26 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Connected to FMS/3,0,2,217
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Network Command: onBWDone
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: Success
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Primary - Stream[fli/17441-Tester] Status: NetStream.Publish.Start
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 08:47:27 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Session Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Video Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:01:10 : Audio Encoding Started
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:20:50 : Encoding and streaming to server is stopped due to a problem in capturing audio/video data. Either the capture device is removed or there is an error in encoding process. Restarting the encoding session.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.IdleTimeOut status Client 6152860803772790103 has been idle for 346 seconds.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:36 : Primary - Disconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:45 : Primary - Reestablishing connection, try 1
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:24:45 : Primary - Reconnected
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:30:37 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.IdleTimeOut status Client 7594275648333572461 has been idle for 352 seconds.
Wed Jun 10 2009 10:30:38 : Primary - Network Status: NetConnection.Connect.Closed status
Is this last error occurred in FMLE 2.5?
One of the reason for this error is:
FMLE is taking long time to encode Video packets that audio packets because of low available processing power of system.
Please try this on higher configuration machine.
Regards,
Neha
I need your help in order to isolate issue further.
Please send me FMLE detail debug logs also with both FMLE 3.0 and FMLE 2.5
Steps to create Debug logs:
1. Goto Installation directory of FMLE i.e. "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Live Encoder 3".
2. Open conf\config.xml file.
3/ Change value of Logs tag to true as
<logs>
<enable>true</enable>
<path></path>
</logs>
4. Save the changes.
5. Then launch FMLE.
6. Start encoding.
7. Wait till the time issue occurs.
8. Stop Encoding and close FMLE.
9. GoTo "My Videos" folder
10. Send me stats folder.
Thanks a lot for your cooperation.
Regards,
Neha