You may have heard by now that Adobe have relaunched Adobe.TV. Adobe have listened to feedback and greatly improved the site through a better navigation system, more robust search and more interactive capabilities. Incidentally the video player used on Adobe.TV is one of the first public video players which utilises the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF).

The site now offers new additions such as a resizable pop-out window that allows users to view content while simultaneously working within their Adobe applications. A new homepage provides quick and easy access to relevant episodes, with the ability to sort by most popular, most viewed, highest rated and recently added. And users can download the Adobe Media Player to view and save content offline, and receive new programming as soon as it is released.

I've used the site to watch a few episodes by the Flex Team and I must admit that the new site is a definitive improvement. While there are some minor glitches still to be ironed out I think this is a destination to keep an eye on. And the quality of the content is superb - which is of course the most important part.

Here's an interesting article from O'Reilly on the state of the computer book market according to their publishing and sales figures.
From a Flash Platform developer's point of view it is exciting to see that ActionScript has moved into the top tier of programming languages, selling enough titles to make it part of the 'Large' languages. The growth of the ActionScript bracket is also very good, in fact it is one of the three fastest growing languages in that category next to C# and PHP.

Way to go Flash!

Bill Sanders has done it again - and yes I know I am slow to blog it. Nevertheless his new book in PDF format, published by O'Reilly and titled Learning Flash Media Server 3, comes highly recommended.

On over 250 pages it covers a lot of ground to get you started with FMS3 and also quite deeply into more advanced topics. From installation to setup over SharedObject and streaming video and audio to server side programming, every reader will get something out of this book.

You can get more info on it at O'Reilly and also order it there for a mere USD $19.99.

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.

My friend and co-author Jan Ozer has just released a huge, 340 page PDF document entitled 'Critical Skills for Streaming Producers'. It is accompanied by a series of video tutorials and materials which will help you hit the ground running when it comes to on location video shooting, lighting, choosing a codec, encoding and much much more.
You can find more info on this page which also contains a link to purchase. I'll definitely grab myself a copy.

Fellow developer Bill Sanders has just announced the release of his latest book 'Learning Flash Media Server 2', published by O'Reilly.
This book aims to give its readers a thorough introduction into the features and capabilities of Flash Media Server 2 by providing a step by step guide for building a variety of applications such as two way communications, streaming video and a text chat application.
In my opinion this book looks like the ideal companion if you want to hit the ground running with Flash Media Server and are looking for less of a reference than a how-to guide to actual applications - check out the table of contents here. I'll definitely be adding this book to my collection.

I've just been given the go ahead to post a sample chapter of my book 'Hands-On Guide To Flash Video' (which I co-authored together with Jan Ozer). So without further delay here is chapter 4 (written by Jan) which covers lighting for shooting web video.

Chapter 4 (7MB PDF).

I you feel so inclined you can order the book from Amazon.

Here's a nice demo by Karl Soule of Adobe covering Adobe OnLocation and Ultra. Both tools have been added to Adobe's offering after the aquisition of Serious Magic.

Ultra is a tool for working with blue- or greenscreen video in a very straight forward way and it allows you to easily change backgrounds in a video and it even gives you a real time preview during the shot, amongst other things. Very cool.

OnLocation (previously called DV Rack) on the other hand provides you with an easy way of recording video directly to disk, for example on your laptop. No need for tapes anymore. I saw a demo of this at Adobe Live in London and the tool is really powerful once you take a few minutes to explore the many options its interface provides.
You can watch the recording by Karl Soule here.

Some of you may know that I've been working on a book, together with my co-author and all round video meister Jan Ozer. The book is titled Hands-on-Guide to Flash Video and it's part of the Hands-on Guider Book Series by Focal Press.
Today I have received my first copy of the book (see pic) and it was a great feeling flipping through it (no, I did not read it!) and actually holding it in my hands - up until now it did not seem real at all and the process of writing and copy editing seems way back in the past (before christmas 2006).
I had a blast writing my chapters (about half of the book), especially since my co-writer was such a great sport and helped me out with great tips and guidance. Jan, you rock. This was my first major writing engagement (I'm more used to blogs and short articles) and I really hope that some of you will enjoy the book and learn a few things from Jan and myself.

The book (which you can preorder here) has quite a broad target audience and I think that most people will gain SOMETHING from it. I tried to keep the code part quite basic because I expect that a lot of readers will be new to Flash and not only to the Flash video side of things. On the flipside I think that seasoned Flashers can gain a lot of new knowledge from Jan's chapters as he takes a close look at codecs, shooting, lighting and encoding, to name but a few. But that's not to say that my chapters on Flash Media Server won't have anything to offer to experienced ActionScripters, too.

Being part of the Adobe Community Experts program carries some benefits (sorry for rubbing this in), one of them being the occasional freebie. Recently I received a free copy of Total Training's Premiere 2 DVD Course - Premiere (and video editing in general) is something I wanted to learn a bit better. Being a book kind of person I hadn't ever seen any of these training courses before and I got to say I was presently surprised. The package includes some 5 DVDs and approximately 17 hours of on-screen training.

There is a lot of detail to the exercises too. Take this for an example (if you already know a bit about Premiere 2): check out the preferences > general option in Premiere 2. There's a heck of a lot of stuff in here but the presenter walks you through each and every one of these options, making sure you understand them all. And this theme carries on right through the rest of the video lessons. I haven't been through the entire course yet but I'm sure it will take my Premiere skills to the next level.

I'm keen to check out the upcoming Flex2 course and I will make sure to post a review once it's out later this month.