The following post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a while and I wasn't sure whether to publish or not. Today I decided I would, and it was after reading a very interesting article by Mike Slinn on InsideRIA. It talks about Adobe's lack of focus on its developer community, and how a shift in startegy may mean winning the RIA market for Adobe.

I'm always hesitant posting an article such as the one that follows as it will most likely be perceived as mainly negative by Adobe and its employees, many of which I know personally and rate very highly. I realise that there are people behind the software that this corporate behemoth churns out and it is for that reason that I'd like to say upfront that everything posted here has Adobe best interests in mind. I desperately want Adobe to succeed in the RIA market (and commonly they are doing a good job - but could do better...) and it is frustrating to see them making decisions that I think are not in their best long term interest.

One of my recent posts to the FlashMedia List seems to have struck a nerve when I asked if anyone there had tried out a Java application called JScrCap yet. According to its author, a developer can 'put this Java code on your web site as a Java applet and get browser-independent, platform-independent screen sharing solution with minimal installation efforts from end users'.

The release of the RTMP specs by Adobe yesterday has thrown up some questions on the nologies. And free Adobe tech support too - I suggest you FlashMedia List, and several people are asking themselves if it is a good idea to actually read them as doing so (or even simply downloading the specs) will mean that you agree to be bound to the RTMP license. In particular, the license includes a section about prohibited uses:

"Prohibited Uses
The rights and licenses granted by Adobe in the RTMP Specification, including those granted in the Patent License, are conditioned upon Your agreement to use the RTMP Specification for only streaming video, audio and/or data content and not to make, have made, use, sell, offer to sell, import or distribute: (i) any technology that intercepts streaming video, audio and/or data content for storage in any device or medium; or (ii) any technology that circumvents technological measures for the protection of audio, video and/or data content, including any of Adobe's secure RTMP measures. No right or license to any Adobe intellectual property is granted for such prohibited uses."

A long thread started on the list, and it was great to see not only community members participating but also several Adobe employees, including FMS engineers and even the product manager himself. Regardless of what you think of the RTMP license (I personally think it's a huge step in the right direction and underlines Adobe's commitment to removing barriers in this field) I think this level of engagement is rarely (ever?) seen by a multi-billion dollar company. Not only did Adobe engage, but they posted a wealth of information around the intricacies of RTMP/E/S security - many thanks to Kevin, Matthew, Asa, Jody and Brad (hope I didn't miss anyone) for regularly participating.

Further proof then (as if I didn't know) that the FlashMedia List is the place to be for the latest info on FMS, Flash video and its related technologies. And free Adobe tech support too - I suggest you subscribe right now :)
Once subscribed you can access the list archives here.

Today Adobe released the specification for Real Time Messaging Protocol (RMTP). The protocol documentation is available for Free, and describes how to use the messaging, chunking and handshake used by Flash Media Server. Adobe's secure protection measures are not exposed in this specification.

Adobe also announced a new product offering called the FMS Connector for C++ SDK, that is also available today for licensing. No details around the license terms have been made public yet, but anyone who is interested in the product can contact FMSOEMinquiries@adobe.com. The connector can be used to publish live audio, video and metadata into Flash Media Server.

I've noticed two separate presentations having been posted by separate authors, both covering the Peer-to-Peer features in Flash Player 10 in combination with Stratus.

The first, shorter video tutorial was authored by Tom Krcha of Adobe and guides you through building a simple P2P application leveraging Stratus. Watch it here.

The second presentation is an hour long session by Danny Patterson and goes into more depth than the previous tutorial. I haven't watched it in full but the part that I have seen looked very interesting and I definitely recommend you check it out.

It should be noted that Stratus is still in beta and detecting failed P2P connections can be a quite tricky. I would not recommend the P2P features for production use yet, instead you may want to rely on AFCS to handle the RTMP fallover for you.

Sumner Paine, Product Manager of the new Strobe media framework, recently presented on this very topic to the FMS User Group. You can see the recording here.

If you haven't heard about Strobe yet, the official summary is: "Strobe provides new delivery and monetization options for video distribution. Anyone can develop modules that plug into Strobe media players and enable things like advertising insertion, content delivery and syndication, micropayments, viewer authentication, transaction handling, and business model controls. With an open framework, the future of web video monetization can be developed collaboratively with lower costs and faster turnaround."

Watch the recording here.

Here's a story that is making the round on various tech news sites at the moment. On May 8th 2009, Adobe issued a takedown notice to SourceForge Inc, asking them to remove a project called rtmpdump from their website as - according to Adobe - it can be used to circumvent copyright protection measures. Even though the takedown notice doesn't mention it, rtmpdump can be used to record streamed content that is delivered via RTMP and (and this is the important part) RTMPE as well. The full wording of the notice can be found here. RTMPE is of course the encrypted flavour of RTMP, Adobe's real time messaging protocol (for which they apparently hold a patent).

As many of you will know, RTMP itself has been widely reverse engineered and documented, which made alternative RTMP servers such as Wowza and Red5 possible. Adobe have also recently announced that the RTMP specs will be made publicly available very soon, and so far I have heard of no action having ever been taken against anyone that implemented just RTMP. Quite clearly, the fuss is about RTMPE, not RTMP. It is the fact that rtmpdump can circumvent certain access controls that made Adobe react. By posing as a Flash Player, rtmpdump can connect to Flash Media Server and successfully pull and record an encrypted stream. In combination with the get_iplayer project rtmpdump made it possible to record all kinds of RTMP based content from sites such as channel4.com and the BBC iPlayer. The version of rtmpdump used within get_iplayer has now been removed and been replaced with a forked version called flvstreamer.

Today Adobe released an update to the FLVPlayback component (v2.5.0.15) for Flash CS4 and Flex 3 (yes, Flex is supported!).
This component has numerous bug fixes to make it more robust for streaming including support for Dynamic Streaming (multibitrate) and DVR. A new Devnet article is also available discussing these new features: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/ (note Part 2 of the DVR article by David Hassoun).

We also released the new DVRCast application that makes it easy to add DVR-enabled live streams to your website using Flash Media Server 3.5.

There's much more info on the new features on Kevin's blog.

You can download both tools from: http://www.adobe.com/go/fms_tools/

I can't wait to try these new features - just need to wait for the next suitable live event :-)
I think it is highly likely that this is the last update to the FLVPlayback component we will see as the upcoming Strobe framework is likely to replace the efforts made my the component. Love it or hate it, the FLVPlayback component helped countless Flash newcomers to get their video content online quickly. If this is indeed the last update then it will go out with a bang as these new features are pretty cool - and we've got a Flex version thrown in too.

InfoQ has an interesting article about Adobe's Collaboration Platforms including ConnectNow and AFCS. In it Raffaele Sena who is a Senior Computer Scientist in Adobe's Business Productivity Unit talks about the scalability challenges of a system such as Connect and how the team has addressed them.
In particular he mentions the use of Terracotta and how it helped scale the system by providing the cluster with distributed memory that also makes failover scenarios much easier to handle. It's an interesting read.

I've had very little experience with Flash Lite to date, but right now I'm working on a project which requires a mobile element to it. Not satisfied with doing the sensible thing and playing it safe I thought it would be great to offer some real-time features on a mobile, either via AFCS or FMS.
So I set out to see what was possible, in particular I wanted to make sure that Remote SharedObjects (RSOs) and NetConnection methods were available in Flash Lite. Here's what I found.

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!

Adobe Strobe is the code-name for a new video player framework with an aim to help drive standards for media players.
Strobe is a great idea and sorely needed. These days every publisher, agency, developer, CDN and ad network are rolling their own video players and integration logic which means there is virtually no best practices approach as far as industry standards go. Why? Because there are no standards as of now, and you can bet that video player A which was developed with CDN B in mind will not work with CDN C unless some pretty major surgery is applied to the player's code.

Strobe is trying to alleviate these pains by providing a player framework which can be extended through a plug-in model. For example the connection routine between CDN A and CDN B differs drastically. In this case Strobe should (once released) allow both CDNs to provide connection routine plug-ins for Strobe (these may simply be some ActionScript3 classes) which developers can leverage easily without having to rework their existing video player code - provided it is built on top of Strobe.

Connection routines are of course just one aspect. Other implementation points may include advertising insertion, content syndication, micropayments, viewer authentication, transaction handling, and business model controls.

According to the FAQ Adobe Strobe is planned for release around the third quarter of 2009.

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.

The wait is over: Adobe have just announced the official name for what was the service code named Cocomo. The official name is now Adobe Flash Collaboration Service (which in short would make it AFCS, or even shorter FCS - ring any bells? :).

Adobe describes AFCS as follows: "Adobe Flash Collaboration Service is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (Rich Internet Applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Adobe Flash Collaboration Service allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you."

I personally love real-time capabilities in web apps and AFCS (just like FMS) really excites me. I have a long list of ideas that I'd love to build with it. What's tricky right now is picking the right tool for the job. My current tool of choice is FMS and has 90% of the features I need in a real-time enabled web app. The developer workflow may not be best with FMS still stuck at AS1 on the server side and very limited APIs for the outside world to talk to it, but most of the time I can build what I want with it.

Great news today amidst the Inauguration celebrations: Adobe is to publish the specifications for its (apparently patented) RTMP protocol. This protocol (the real-time messaging protocol) is designed for high-performance transmission of audio, video, and data between Adobe Flash Platform technologies, including Flash Media Server. Other server platforms such as Wowza and Red5 had in the also added support for RTMP and this announcement should make it somewhat easier for third parties to develop compatible technologies (if there are still any unanswered question about RTMP that is).

According to Adobe's Serge Jespers, the RTMP details will soon be published on Adobe.com. The full press release is here.

"With the RTMP specification, developers and companies will be able to provide users with optimized audio, video and data streaming, no matter what kind of device the user is on or where the content is coming from," said Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch. "Our ongoing commitment to openness is accelerating adoption of the Flash Platform by developers and resulting in a new generation of Web applications, content and video experiences that run reliably across operating systems and devices."

Understandably Adobe will not release details of the secure variants of RTMP such as RTMPE since it forms the backbone of some of the content protection measures in Flash Media Server.

Alongside the recently released Flash Media Server 3.5 and its Dynamic Streaming and DVR capabilities Adobe have also pushed out an updated version of their FLVPlayback component. As Andrew Shorten explains, this component can be used in both Flash or Flex since it is not based on UIComponent. In short, FLVPlayback brings a more fully featured video component to Flex (dare I say finally), and while most of us have a love-hate relationship with this baby it's certainly good news for the platform, and you no longer have to 'port' your Flash based FLVPlayback component to Flex now (as I did here).

I gave the component a quick test drive and wrapped it into a Flex project that you can download and try yourself. The demo below uses FMS for streaming, the downloadable project uses a progressive download. Note that I'm using Oleg's excellent Swfobject 2.1 Flex template and I added the allowFullScreen parameter for this example and removed the history management (not really needed for a plain video player). Sources here.

Yes it's out, and this time I've double checked! Flash Media Server 3.5 is now available for download and purchase from the Adobe website.

This release mainly adds new features such as the new Dynamic Streaming, DVR functionality, HTTP delivery support, and H.264 enhancements. There are no changes in licensing or pricing. The editions also remains unchanged with the Flash Media Streaming Server (FMSS) taking care of your live and on-demand streaming needs while the Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS) provides more complex features such as recording capabilities and Origin-Edge setups, as well as full support for server side scripting.
Of course you can also try the free Flash Media Development Server 3.5 and use all the features of FMIS up to a limit of 10 connections.

Download FMS 3.5 now.

Flash Media Live Encoder, Adobe's free live encoding tool for broadcasting live streams has also seen an update today, bringing it up to version 3.0. The major new feature here is the ability to encode multiple streams in multiple bitrates at once, publish them to FMS 3.5 and then make use of the Dynamic Streaming feature in a live setting. Pretty cool stuff.

You can download Flash Media Live Encoder 3.0 from this page.

It's a bit embarrassing to admit that it has taken me this long to post this app. I first spoke about it at my talk at MAX 2008 in Milan but then Christmas came and went and I got swamped with work... Apologies, but better late than never.

So what have we got here? My PureMVC Skeleton App is a simple Flex project that uses the PureMVC framework to give you a bit of a head start with your next FMS project. I'm by no means suggesting that this is the best way to build an FMS app but what I can say is that it works well for me. Not only that but since I've picked up PureMVC I have been able to build much larger projects than ever before, and the framework allows me to come back to an app months later and pick it up in no time at all. Everything has its place and it's easy to find your way around, and projects generally end up well maintained.
One thing I should point out is that the app itself has no UI - there's nothing to see when you compile it (hence the skeleton bit in its name). You will however see traces if you compile a debug project, or install Firebug for Firefox so you can see the Thunderbolt AS3 traces I tend to use extensively.

In order to connect to your own FMS application you first need to create it on FMS (mine is called pmvcskeleton) and then go into the ResourceBundleProxy and on line 42 add your corresponding RTMP string. I'm not sure if this is a good idea but I often use ResourceBundles for configuration options such as the RTMP string, I find it quite handy since they usually do not change so I just compile that in.

It helps if you are a bit familiar with FMS based applications and the MVC design pattern. For everything else check out the PureMVC website, it has tons of info and a lively community. Or why not sign up to my FlashMedia List, there's always a bunch of knowledgeable people there ready to help.

On this note I will leave you to it, take a look at the app and feel free to post a comment if anything isn't clear.

Massive thanks to Simon who gave me some excellent tips when I got stuck with certain PureMVC nags.

Download the project .zip here.

Please find below the presentation that Matthew Kaufman of Adobe gave at MAX North America. It covers the new RTMFP protocol and gives some detailed insights into its capabilities as well as possible future features including the much talked about application-level multicast.

Keep your eyes open for the full video of the presentation on Adobe TV (I am not sure if it will be published there or not, but the video roadmap session is there already).

Adobe has just announced that Stratus is now publicly available for use by developers as a beta service. This is the long awaited missing link that will allow developers to take advantage of the new UDP based RTMFP protocol in Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5. Why is this important? Well with RTMFP and Stratus, data can now be sent directly client to client allowing for highly cost-effective real-time communication.
In order to use RTMFP, Flash Player endpoints must connect to an RTMFP-capable server, such as the Adobe Stratus service. Stratus is a beta, hosted rendezvous service that aids establishing communications between Flash Player endpoints. Unlike Flash Media Server, Stratus does not support media relay, shared objects, scripting, etc. So by using Stratus, you can only develop applications where Flash Player endpoints are directly communicating with each other.

At MAX this year we also learned that a future (and yet unreleased) version of FMS will also support RTMFP and will be able to facilitate the same endpoint functionality as Stratus. But not only that: this future version of FMS can also use RTMFP in a client-server-client architecture, meaning that any traditional FMS based application can potentially make use of UD based, low latency communications. It does not have to be peer to peer setup... that I think is great news.

In the meantime you can sign up for a Stratus developer key and start playing.

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!

Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 (FMS 3.5) is now available to pre-order. It will incorporate new features including Dynamic Streaming, DVR functionality, HTTP delivery support, and H.264 enhancements.
The upgrade price in the US is the US$349 (depending on your existing edition), with UK pricing being in line with that (and by that I mean: just change your currency symbol since the UK price puts the exchange rate to the US dollar more or less at 1:1 with a price of GBP 346.62).
You can download the current version (FMS3) from the Adobe website and give it a try.

Apologies for the earlier misinformation, I was under the impression that FMS 3.5 had actually shipped.

A page and FAQ on Adobe Stratus is now up on Labs.

As you may have heard, Stratus is the name of an upcoming service that will allow Flash Player 10 and AIR 1.5 clients to connect directly to one another in a peer to peer mode and exchange data once a connection is established. The protocol used is the new RTMFP (real time media flow protocol) protocol and it runs over UDP, not TCP. The use of UDP has a positive effect on latency and will therefore make Flash Player's peer to peer features ideal for one to one communications and reduce bandwidth costs since the server is sidestepped. You can try the new features using this sample application (Player 10 required).

While the Stratus cloud service is necessary to connect clients in this way, there will also be an upcoming version of Flash Media Server that is capable of facilitating this connection. More information on this is available in this PDF file.

RTMFP is one of the most exiting developments for Flash Player in recent times and it will add major new capabilities to the platform. There are plans to develop RTMFP further, and I recommend you attend the Sneak Peak sessions at Adobe MAX Milan next week where Adobe may showcase application level multi-cast over RTMFP. As outlined by Matthew Kaufman at MAX North America, the RTMFP protocol could evolve further and support one to many broadcasts, Group setups as well as Direct Routing.
Flash Player 10 will not enable swarming, multi-cast or broadcast quality live video at this time.

These are definitely exciting times to be a Flash Platform developer.

Today Adobe announced the next version of Flash Media Server, FMS 3.5. Dynamic Streaming makes it easier to deliver a consistent stream even when bandwidth conditions and general network health changes during playback. While similar techniques were possible before it is now even easier and in particular much more seamless to integrate this functionality.
The DVR feature is great when viewing live streams, either to rewind back to the beginning of the broadcast or simply to re-view a certain part of the stream. I can see this being a great feature for sports broadcasts in particular.

FMS 3.5 now also ships with an in-built web server in the form of Apache. This allows developers to provide a single point of access to their content and they can now deliver SWF, JPEG, CSS, JS and other assets including video over it. It's notable that both RTMPT and HTTP can co-exist on the same port (80) and IP address.

Kevin Towes has a full length post on his blog outlining all the new features in FMS 3.5.

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.

I've recently decided that I should post more tips and tricks on this blog. I get a lot of emails and also answer questions on mailing lists that contain information that may be hard to track down (or in the case of email replies impossible) and would be better posted publicly on a blog. Here's one I'd like to start with.

Question: I have been trying to use your tutorial on the NetStream.send function and am getting frustrated. I have been researching this for the past couple of days and not finding any answers.

Here's a Connect presentation that some of you may find useful. Kevin Towes presents on the history, concepts and development tasks of building a media player in Flash.
I think his presentation is particularly useful to less technical people who would like to understand a bit more about the Flash development process, and also get a feel for the challenges in building a video player - it turns out it's not as easy as some may think. And since this is what I have been doing a few times over it makes me look really clever.

Kevin Towes, Product Manager for Flash Media Server at Adobe, has just posted the following note on the Flash Media List:

Adobe would like your help to test the next version of our Flash Media Server software, the best way to deliver media to the Adobe Flash platform and to create rich interactive solutions.

Learn about some of the exciting new features we're adding that will significantly improve the quality of media delivery to Adobe Flash Player 10 and make it much easier to deploy your own Flash Media Server.
Discover how new delivery technology can help improve the video performance and delivery the best experience to your audience. You will also get a sneak peak in some exciting new live streaming technology.

By participating you will have access to discuss Flash Media Server and streaming with the experts at Adobe and within the community to build relationships and get a jump on creating new media experiences for Flash Player.
If you're interested in testing this next generation Adobe software, please take a moment and fill out our survey. You could be testing as soon as 24 hours from now!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=y0_2f01VYSDUiwLfHYUMtQwA_3d_3d

You can find out more info on Kevin's blog at: http://blogs.adobe.com/ktowes/

(But remember where you heard it first ;-)

As you may know I am spending the main part of this week at Flash on the Beach in Brighton. If you don't know what Flash on the Beach is, it's the biggest Flash (and Flex, AIR etc) conference in the UK, if not Europe. It's also the best conference of the whole year in my calendar. I presented my session on monday right after the keynote so I am now free to enjoy the conference fully. While attending some of the sessions I gathered a few interesting bits of information, some of which may not have been public knowledge before.

Adobe today announced the Flash Media Encoding Server at IBC. This is a new scalable, high-performance solution for converting multiple video file formats to Flash video (FLV/F4V) and the latest addition to the Adobe Flash Media Server family of products. The solution is powered by Rhozet, one of the leading providers of transcoding solutions.

At IBC2008, Adobe is also previewing new technologies that will be available in future versions of Adobe Flash Media Server. These include dynamic streaming for delivering the highest quality, uninterrupted viewing experience, and the ability to pause or rewind a live video stream. Expect more news from IBC over the coming days.

Full press release here.

I know I am late blogging this but initially I didn't think it was that big a deal. A press release made the rounds outlining Adobe's deal with the NFL to stream the NBC Sunday Night Football games on NFL.com and NBCSports.com live using Flash video. As some of you may know, NBC covered most of the Olympics in North America using Silverlight technology.
Several sites were quick to announce that NBC Dumped Silverlight and that they ran back to Flash, and while the story is certainly a big achievement for Flash as a platform I don't think that any other technology got dumped during the proceedings. Remember, the Olympics are over - and the initial arrangement between NBC and Microsoft covered the Olympics - not the NFL, not the Premier League, not the annual nativity play.

It's great to hear of another major achievement for our beloved platform but I think we should chill out a bit and take the announcement for what is is, and not for what can be read into it. I bet Silverlight just needs time to mature... ;-)

If you are blood thirsty then here's more for you.