I'm not sure if I have or haven't blogged this once before, but a second time can't hurt anyway. I've just spent another half hour trying to get a simple SMIL file to work in conjunction with the FLVPlayback component. Normally this should be quite easy: you establish the rtmp address of the video you want to play, assign this as the source property of the FLVPlayback component and you're done. Like so:
To transfer this to a SMIL file (handy if you are looking to support Dynamic Streaming in FMS) you would do this:

Looks plausible doesn't it? Shame then this DOES NOT WORK. Did you spot the error? Yeah, I'm such a noob, it's obvious isn't it?

StreamingLearningCenter will be running two one-week streaming production courses to be taught by my friend Jan Ozer of streaminglearningcenter.com. The two hands-on courses, to be held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA (July 20-24) and Harvard in Boston, MA (July 27-31) and will cover streaming production from set design to encoding using equipment from vendors like Sony, Bogen and Photoflex, and production software from Adobe and Apple. Class sizes are limited to ensure active participation for all students.

On July 14th, David Hassoun will be presenting to the FMS User Group on available video players for a Video Player Showdown.

This session will be a discussion and dive into the multitude of video player options out there for streaming Flash Video content. This will be an open discussion about some of the various open source and other video players out there for developers to choose from. We will also discuss the customization capabilities and feature comparisons for some of the available players and factors that should be considered when choosing one. We will also compare to custom building your own player and the considerations, benefits and drawbacks of such.

If you are working with Flash Video and have ever asked yourself which video player to use, or should I just build one myself and where to start - this session is for you!

If you live in the UK or happen to be here on June the 16th then you could do a lot worse than to attend Flash Camp Birmingham. It's hard to believe but yes, life does exist on this island outside London (in fact I am living proof of it and Birmingham is only a short drive from where I live). I'm very much looking forward to this event.

The schedule looks really interesting, but then I would say that since I'm part of it :-) and will be sitting on a panel with both Mike and Simon to tell you a bit about the life of a Flash geek freelancer and maybe get some of you who are stuck inside an ActionScript-sweatshop (only kidding, we all know they only exist in London) interested in trying it on your own. As you may find out, it's not all that scary and quite good fun if you're the sort of type that is prepared to take what I think is a pretty small risk (who can't return to a full time job if they want to) in return for a lot of freedom.

Hope to see you at Flash Camp. Come and say hi. Big shout outs to Jodie who's doing a fantastic job organising this event alongside his real job (do you see where this is going?).

PS: sorry about the incorrect date on this post, I know... Issues after MySQL upgrade and no time to fix them atm - and no clue how actually :-)

The FMS Online User Group is holding its next meeting on April 15th. The topic this time is 'Transcoding/Video compression in the Adobe Suite', presented by Andy Beach who is the Director of Product Management at Inlet Technologies. More details here. Hope to see you there.

The Golf Masters is back in full swing at the moment and I've been told that the live coverage is very cool indeed. Joe Hakooz kindly emailed me and noted that "the Masters is again broadcasting live using Flash. It's a very interactive player and the video looks better than ever".

Unfortunately - as with many sporting events - the coverage is geo-restricted and I cannot watch it here in the UK. It's a real shame and doesn't reflect the global nature of the internet. What makes it worse is that you do not find out about this until you click one of the live feeds - couldn't they at least hide the links from me to make it less depressing?

For everyone that can see it - enjoy (and send some screenshots please). I'll watch it on TV in the meantime.

re:boot re:place is a dynamic interactive one-day event which explores cultural and commercial opportunities in the digital age.
The event will show how organisations are using technologies connected in innovative ways to enter into conversations with new and bigger audiences.
The event is being broadcast live all day today and online viewers and delegates will be able to interact via a live chat room (guess who built that one) projected onto the main stage. Maybe I'll see you there.

Lisa Larson-Kelley will be hosting an online event named 'FMS 3.5 for the Absolute Beginner'. The talk is part of the regular Adobe FMS Users Group meetings and takes place on February 27, 2009 from 9:00am - 10:00am PST.
"For those just getting started with streaming and want to start from square one, or just know enough to be dangerous, this session will cover streaming fundamentals, FMS 3.5 capabilities, server installation, and building a basic streaming media player in Flash CS4. Bring your questions, and walk away with a better understanding of streaming and real-time interactivity with Flash Media Server 3.5."

Full event details can be found here. I hope to see you there (if I finally make it this time...).

Here's an interesting video of a discussion on RIA technologies including Silverlight, Flex and AIR. Sam Stokes, academic developer/evangelist at Microsoft Corporation and Kevin Hoyt, platform evangelist at Adobe represented the two sides.
You can watch the video here - but be warned, the viewing experience isn't great, especially if you are on a Mac.

A few months ago I put together a website called BanterTV.com. BanterTV.com aggregates the BBC iPlayer Live streams and adds a chat interface to each 'channel'.

As today is Inauguration Day for president Obama it may be appropriate to announce my little project here and invite UK viewers (iPlayer streams are UK only) to join me on BBC 1 where Huw Edwards and Matt Frei present live coverage from Washington DC as Barack Obama is sworn in as 44th President of the United States and addresses the nation.

Watch the event live on BanterTV.com. Hope to see you there. Coverage in the UK starts at 4pm GMT.

Led by industry guru's Graeme Bull and David Hassoun, this new user group will focus on Flash Media Server technology and solutions. The group will provide a forum of support and education in online video streaming, creation of interactive video experiences, application development and idea exchanges and much more. Access the group now from www.adobe.com/go/fms_usergroup

This group will start as an online user group, and as membership grows, will split into geographical groups that can meet in person on a regular basis. It's all about idea sharing how to stream video better, how to build more stable media solutions, how to innovate user generated content and social experiences.

Member skills can range from the absolute beginner to the absolute guru. Together, the community will drive new resources and education at all levels and on all subjects related to online video and communication.

The online group will be compose of:
Monthly, online meetings with industry experts and adobe personnel
Discussion Area - ask questions, discuss topics, solve problems
Event Calendar - posting of user group meetings and other pertinent industry events
Reference Library - files, bookmarks, contacts, notes, pictures, and more...
Blog - an RSS feed to pertinent, industry blogs
Job Board - advertise job openings
Media Gallery - share unique video apps

I hope you will join the group. The first meeting is TODAY and to kick off the group and give you an overview of FMS 3.5. Details here.
See you there, I'll try and make it!

MAX Europe turned out to be a great conference and it was really nice to be able to catch up with so many old and new faces. I finally got to meet Fabio Sonnati whose session on H.264 encoding for Flash was packed with technical info and practical advice.
Being my usual lazy self I relied on others to log all the information, and it was of little surprise to me that my friend Tim Siglin did just that. Tim has an excellent summary of Fabio's session over at streamingmedia.com.

The folks at Just-B are running another creative event today under the bTWEEN umbrella called C:Cubed. There's a live webcast running for most of the day courtesy of my friends at Kinura, accompanied by a live chat for users at home and at the venue (I was talking about a similar chat yesterday at my talk at MAX Milan). So why not pop by and check out what's happening?

There's quite a lot happening on Twitter today (you can follow me if you like) and I thought I may post a few important announcements here.

AIR and Flash Player 10 on mobile is a big deal. The Google Android creator Andy Rubin was on stage talking about Flash Player 10 running on Android. There was also a demo of installing Flash Lite apps over the air on Windows Mobile and Symbian. About time.
More importantly, Adobe and ARM are partnering up and will bring the full Player 10 to a lot of smartphones. Adobe can also deliver Player 10 for the Jesus Phone - but Steve Jobs needs to give it the ok first. Apple's loss (and mine) if you ask me.

Thermo is now called Flash Catalyst. Nice piece of toolkit, rubbish name.

A 64bit preview release of Flash Player 10 for Linux is available now on Labs.

Cocomo is in public beta, but I told you that already.

Last but not least, Major League Baseball (MLB.com) are switching back to Flash for all their video broadcasts, dropping Silverlight in the process. That's quite a big deal since MLB have made a serious investment in Windows Media. Since their service is pay per view one must assume that they are quite happy with the level of protection Flash video offers them.

Should you have any doubts about the importance of Flash Media Server in Adobe's overall strategy then look no further than Adobe MAX San Francisco.
As just announced by Kevin Towes, FMS Product Manager, Flash Media Server will have big presence at this year's MAX and feature not only in the keynote but also in a dedicated Bird of a Feather session about the 'Future of Video on the Web'. I would not want to miss that one... (however I will since I'm not going to be in San Francisco for MAX)

There are a lot video and FMS related sessions happening and you should check out the particulars which Kevin is highlighting, including Multibitrate Video, Future of Communication with RTMFP and the Sneak Peak session at 5.30pm on Tuesday November 18th.

I will not make it to the US but will be attending MAX Europe in Milan in a few weeks time, where I will also be speaking on Building Collaborative Applications with FMS, a re-run of my session at Flash on the Beach. I say re-run - but it may only be a partial one - because if all goes well I will get the green light to show some of the new RTMFP/P2P features which are coming to a browser near you soon.

I will see you in Milan.

Today will see the start of the XCEL Pro Live event, streamed from Sunset Beach, Hawaii. I've been working on their live player on and off for a while and it's great to see it in action again today.
So if you are a surf fan (or even if you aren't) then check out the XCEL Pro Surf event, starting today.

Jan Ozer is da man when it comes to video codecs - I was fortunate to have had such a knowledgeable co-author by my side when writing my first (and maybe only) book.

At Streaming Media West Jan presented a session on Encoding H.264 Video for Streaming and Progressive Download and I highly recommend checking out the PDF since it contains a ton of great information on H.264.

Jan's also taking part in Streaming Media Europe which started today in London. He has also written many book,s articles and authored DVD titles on many video related topics. Check out Jan's website for links to his work.
I'm making my way to Streaming Media Europe tomorrow to moderate a panel (on Friday) on Live Flash Video with panelists from Perform, Eurosport and On2.

Update: I just found a shorter version of Jan's session in video form.

I'll be attending FOWA (Future of Web Apps) this week. The event takes place at London's Excel and Adobe is one of the major sponsors.
The speaker lineup is also very impressive and includes Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Kevin Rose (digg) and Tim Bray (Sun Microsystems), to name but a few. Are you attending? I'd love to hook up and I'll be there on the Thursday. Adobe is also running an AIR app competition and I'm inclined to enter an idea...
See you at FOWA.

Some people have asked me to post my slides from my session at Flash on the Beach.
Here they are. I've also thrown in some sample applications - check out 'simple chat' if you are new to FMS since it contains several common mechanisms such as SharedObject use, NetConnection.call and Client.call

Download the slides here (10.5MB PDF and sources).

Finally a conference on my doorstep! Tomorrow afternoon I will be hosting a session on 'Collaboration with Flash Media Server' at the European eLearning Summit in Nottingham. I am hoping to show lots of examples and allow the audience to join in - may the WIFI be with us.

Later this year (but not much later actually...) I will present a similar session at Flash on the Beach, the main difference being that the session in Brighton will have a bit more of a focus on code as well as a some inspirational pieces.
If you attend either one of the conference then please find me and say hi.

I'm seriously excited about speaking at Flash on the Beach this year. While I didn't make it to FOTB06, I did attend FOTB07 as a delegate and - as everyone who went there can confirm - had a fantastic time. This conference is simply outstanding, both in terms of the quality of the sessions (I will try not to be the exception) as well as the partying (again, no exception I hope!). I highly recommend you book your ticket TODAY since they seem to be selling like like hot cakes. Early bird pricing is still to be had!

If you browse around the FOTB website you will notice that my session title is still unconfirmed. It'll come as a shock that I intend to cover FMS in some shape or form but I am also keen to hear what it is that YOU would like to see or hear. Leave a comment - but keep it clean ;-)

This is a follow-up to my post "Live Uefa Euro 2008 via FMS". I've just heard that the Euro 2008 is streamed live with Flash in France too.

This time DBee is doing the encoding for the website of the french TV Channel M6. They are serving a 1.1Mbps stream (1Mbps VP6 video + 64 Kbps MP3 audio) sized at 534x300 (16/9), using a Digital Rapids StreamZ Live and FME as a backup, from a DVB-T source via SDI input. The stream is served by the FMS3 Limelight platform which sustains a 'very heavy load' in terms of concurrent streams, however exact details on viewership could not be shared.

The user experience both on the page itself as well as in full screen is nice, a fact confirmed by the choice of the public: up to 65% of the users choose Flash, compared to Windows Media which is also being offered. This is an interesting figure, because on a comparable event one year ago during the Evian Masters, DBee reported that only 40% of users picked Flash while over 60% chose Windows Media.

The next match is the semi-final between Russia and Spain on the 26th of June, but note that streams are geo-locked to French web users.

Just a quick heads up. There will be some more live webcasting throughout the day today, and we'll also be utilizing the chat a great deal. This was a well received feature yesterday and actually brought tears to my eyes with laughter at times.
The chat is projected up front on the stage and constantly used as a talkback channel to the speakers on stage - a great concept in my opinion.

b.TWEEN is turning out to be a great event. It's my first time in Manchester and which is a great city and a brilliant place for a venue. We're at the Museum of Science and Industry, so there's some cool old school tech to be seen, too. I'll head down to the powerhouse later and check out the steam engines...

I've just arrived at b.TWEEN08 in Manchester.

The official line about the event is as follows: b.TWEEN is a unique cross media gathering where interactive ideas are seeded, shared and sold.
(It uses technology in innovative ways and radical formats to deliver cutting edge, interactive events with networking and business at their core.
b.TWEEN is about knowledge sharing, being inspired, learning from peers and doing deals.

My company muchosmedia has built the text chat that runs alongside the live webcast (all the streaming is being handled by our friends at Kinura). What's unique about the chat is that we've come up with and built a gateway to allow the audience to take part in the chat (which is projected onto a big screen at the venue) via sending an SMS text message to a dedicated number. I'll post some images as soon as I can.

If you are in the UK and near a computer (but not near a TV) wanting to watch live football (or soccer if you prefer) action then head over to the BBC One Euro 2008 pages and watch it there - streamed live in Flash via FMS.

The quality is nothing to write home about, which is likely due to a low bitrate used. My guess would be sub-300 kbit (see screengrab). Still, even in fullscreen and way better than the stamp sized experiences we used to see only a few years ago. How times have changed - here we have one of the biggest sporting events in the world streamed live, for free, over the net. I wish Sky would take some ideas from that.

But bitrates aside (they could be adjusted if wanted by the broadcaster), this is a huge event for live Flash video. After the Masters a few months ago I doubt that anyone still has any doubts about Flash as a viable and credible live streaming platform.

The 3rd Adobe sponsored London Poker Tournament is now open for registration (www.pokercoder.com).
The event is completely FREE and will take place on the 27th May at 7pm at the Loose Cannon Poker club in Cannon Street. Adobe are providing the beer and prizes as usual. This event is open only to those who use Adobe products professionally. Don't worry if you've never played before as there are always lots of newbies and the dealers at your table will be giving you all 20 minutes of training if you need it.
The London Poker Tournament is now open for registration www.pokercoder.com and if you have any further questions, contact the organiser at sean@pokercoder.com.

The Adobe AIR Tour is coming to London tomorrow (I heard there's free beer..?) and I'll be taking part, hopefully meeting up with Mike, Andrew, Chris and a bunch of other lunatics. My mate Steve is coming along, but Simon unfortunately had to cancel at short notice.

If you are there then make sure to say hello - I'm the guy without a voice (recovering from a really bad man cold, as anyone who's spoken to me in the last few days can attest).

Here's a really good, long read - and this is one from the trenches.

On the same note, a project manager who I have worked closely with on many Flash projects emailed me the other day and said: 'We can move on with that Flash job now. I've just finished my first Silverlight project - it was hell'. I'll have to dig deeper and find out what happened.

What I distill from these people's experiences is something along the lines of 'Silverlight is potentially quite good, but it's not good yet'. At the same time I see many people on several mailing lists (some of them Microsoft employees) announcing Silverlight as the next best thing since sliced bread, but how many of those people have actually put in the time that Jesse has? Are those people fit to comment? Or can the success of a technology really be bought by throwing vast amounts of money at it? Would the Flash Platform be where it is now had it not been nurtured over time and grown organically? .NET I hear you say - I don't buy that argument. Yes it has been around for a while but never been leveraged in the form of a RIA platform. Silverlight is the new kid on the block, and it'll have to earn its respect. Pointing at the big cousin alone won't stick.

I'll give Silverlight a shot sometime, but not just yet, and not if it means booting up that Vista box again. Please don't make me do that.

A pretty cool lineup - well DJ Z-Trip was cool anyways, not sure what to expect from the Pussycat Dolls :-) Check it out right now for another 3 hours.
Operation Myspace, live from Kuwait. Live encoding in multiple bitrates (up to 1.3Mbps 30fps) in VP6 via Kulabyte. Delivery is as far as I know over Akamai.

I've just received the official line about this event:
On March 10, Myspace is hosting a live HD streaming Webcast, which will utilize Adobe Flash technology. "Operation MySpace" is a landmark event designed to support U.S. troops stationed in Kuwait and will be broadcast around the world. The free music and comedy event will include performances by the Pussycat Dolls, Jessica Simpson, Disturbed, Filter and DJ Z-Trip. Using the powerful streaming capabilities in Adobe Flash Media Server 3 coupled with the award-winning Adobe Flash Player runtime, U.S. troops, family, and friends can experience the webcast live over the Internet in full-screen HD. This webcast from Kuwait will demonstrate the future of video on the Web, delivering high definition video of the event at less than 1.5 megabits per second.

The webcast will start at 11a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET and can be viewed live at http://myspace.com/operationmyspace.

there's also a full press release about the event.

From Monday 25 February to Saturday 1 March, 24 of the world's best snowboarders and skiers will have free reign of the European Alps. They will be taking part in the Swatch O'Neill Big Mountain Pro, 8 days of all terrain action, in search of the most thrilling obstacles that nature has to offer. Freecaster.tv will be streaming Live coverage for 2 hours every day from 16:00 to 18:00 (CET).