I just needed to troubleshoot a client's FMS installation. Videos are organised in a deep structure of subfolders and to be delivered via the standard VOD application of Flash Media Streaming Server. I was using the FLVPlayback component to make sure the videos were playable. Once again it became apparent that the FLVPlayback component needs to be fed with an application instance name as soon as you try and deliver files that are not inside the toplevel /vod/media folder.
As you may know, the VOD application is by default configured to live (on Windows) at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3\applications\vod while its files are stored at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3\applications\vod\media. Both setting can be configured either in fms.ini or directly in FMS's XML conf files.
I needed to remap the VOD directory from VOD_DIR = C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3\applications\vod\media to a new location. This worked fine. However as soon as I started to create subfolders inside /media I was no longer able to stream the videos using the FLVPlayback component. Luckily - and through past experiences - I knew that this was an instance problem. So instead of setting FLVPlayback's source to rtmp://myserver.com/vod/subfolder/myvideo I added an instance name - any instance name - such as rtmp://myserver.com/vod/inst/subfolder/myvideo and voila, the video would play again.
Hopefully this information will save somebody some grief.


I have been experimenting with FMS3 and it's new VOD media asset organization. We modified the fms.ini file to look to our high speed SAN for the VOD folder where the videos are organized in subfolders. I didn't have any trouble accessing these assets through RTMP and I use a custom built Flash video playback component. Your post has given me pause for concern.
Regards
Stefan
I had tried but no effect
Mapped network drives can be used for storing media, but I seem to remember that I had problems using share names. Try using the IP instead.
I had installed FMS in my local system and the videos are in a network path for example \\salinux\videos
I had put this UNC path for the VOD_DIR.
But it is not working.
In this path, where I put the IP address?
(but use the actual IP of your network drive)
Sorry, this is not my best area of expertise...
It is not working using the IP address.
Thanks for your reply.
read this doc
Adobe Flash Media Server
at Adobe Flash Media Server Configuration and Administration Guide / Configuring the server / Configuring content storage /Mapping Directories to
network drives
actually FMS is running as a local system account. So, change its log on account to one which has network access. Go to run-> services.msc.
open the properties for flash media server service & flash media administrator service and change the log on account.
after this it would probably start working for you also.
To respond to your comment about streaming from live or vod, I created a subfolder within the media folder, which contains the vod samples. I then moved the sample.flv file into this subfolder (foo) and restarted the FMS service. Still no joy...
Anyone had/have this issue?
So I've changed VOD_DIR in fms.ini and it works fine as long as I stream a video from ..vod/media. If I try to create a subfolder in the media folder or in the vod folder and access via "rtmp:[address]/vod/media/media2/sample", things don't work anymore.
Any help is highly appreciated.
HTH
However, I've tried this as well. I have a "myvod" application with "streams/_definst_/" and it works fine. But I've put a "media2" subfolder under the "streams/_definst_/" path and I cannot stream. Maybe I just haven't been able to find the correct rtmp path. Or maybe I need to change my main.asc, which now contains just:
application.onConnect = function(p_client)
{
this.acceptConnection(p_client);
}
From what you describe though your setup should work. I guess it's 'just' a path issue. Hard to say from here.
It was indeed a path problem, I had to use "rtmp:[address]/myvod/_definst_/media2/myvideo". Actually it's what you've pointed out, the fact that you have to include the instance name, but I didn't expect this would apply to _definst_.
Thanks again and have a nice day!