Interesting. Apart from the cool 360 degree video demo I blogged about earlier today, there also seem to be new features on the horizon for Flash Player and FMS when it comes to support for multiple bitrates and seamless switching between them depending on network conditions.

Kevin Towes presented on FMS at NAB recently and towards the end of his talk showed some sneak peaks of possibly upcoming new features in Flash and FMS. The experience he demoed shows an absolutely seamless switching capability between video feeds, or between multiple bitrates inside one file. It is not clear if it is the former or the latter, but in any case it sounds like that this is coming and it will make moving between bitrates of a single clip much easier and smoother. So smooth that you can't even hear a break in the audio.

Unfortunately the direct link to Kevin's talk does not seem to work, but if you go to http://tv.adobe.com and search for 'Kevin Towes' you will find the clip. It's the first result that comes up in the search and the sneak peak is towards the end of the presentation.

There are situations where I needed a copy of FMS2, but of course the official download page is no longer available since the release of Flash Media Server 3. Or is it?
Updaters to the rescue. It's a little know fact that all FMS2 Updaters are actually full versions of the product, not merely patches. So if you need a copy of FMS2 simple head over to Flash Media Server Support Center and download it.

Here comes a little gotcha that could potentially have you pulling your hair out for a fair few hours, and some more once you realise how simple the 'fix' is.
If you are streaming files from FMS (be it version 2 or 3) then you may have made use of its Virtual Directory feature. This allows you to use a key (basically a named mapping) to point FMS at different storage locations for video files.

For example you could configure a key name of 'myvideos' and map this to a location of C:\myfiles\videostorage. The tag in vhost.xml would look like this:

Then every time a stream is requested via NetStream.play the server will look for the myvideos key in the stream path and if found locate the appropriate video file inside /videostorage (or if required in a subfolder).

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.

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 ;-)

My fellow German developers Sven Ramuschkat and Dirk Eismann of Richinternet.de have posted some great tips on how to load test Flash Media Server 3 on their blog. What's more, the tests are using the freely available FMSCheck.exe tool by Adobe and to top it off can be used with Flash Media Server 2 as well.

Note to self: when trying to stream H.264 based footage from Flash Media Server 3 using the FLVPlayback component and a SMIL file, make sure to specify both the mp4: prefix as well as the file extension. I found out the hard way and 45 minutes later managed to debug it... As you may know, when using FLV files you need neither a prefix nor a file extension.

Here's a example of what worked for me. I saved this as smil.xml, uploaded it to a web server and pointed the FLVPlayback component's source property at that file.

Say hello to a new member of the Flash Media Server family: Flash Media Rights Management Server, a platform to 'protect media content delivered to Adobe Media Player and Adobe AIR applications'. In short, the server provides DRM for Flash video.
The nice thing about its approach is that video files themselves are not being manipulated, but instead policies can be applied to tie a particular video to a user or device for a certain amount of time, or indeed make it free for all but tied to a playlist which may contain advertising. Policies can be altered or removed later, making re-purposing existing materials easy without the need for re-encoding.

the price tag of $40,000 may be shocking at first but it shoudl be remembered that you or I won't pay that bill, but the Sonys and Akamais of this world probably will. So yes, we'll get to play with it (I hope) but we will likely never ever buy an actual license.
Tim Siglin has some more coverage on it, the Adobe press release is here, the product page here.

Remember to add one more acronym to add to your vocabulary - FMRS is the Flash Media Rights Management Server which was released today.

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.

I spent a couple of hours today on getting my good old Scratchpad application to run on Facebook - a rather pointless exercise I know, especially since I hardly use Facebook at all. Still, please do me a favor and add the app to your profile so it gets some eyeballs - I need at least 5 users before I can submit it to the application directory. Thanks!

I'm not sure about it - but they say they did. In their recent FMS3 white paper on page 8 there's a reference to "the Adobe patented, RTMP over Transmission Control Protocol". I'm not sure if this was common knowledge but as far as I remember there was no known patent in existence around RTMP - but it certainly looks like there is now. A quick Google patent search brough up this result.
While RTMP has not been patented explicitly in this patent, something that sounds even wider reaching has (at least to my limited experience), namely a "Method and system for facilitating communications between an interactive multimedia client and an interactive multimedia communication server".

While I don't know if this particular patent is the one cited in the white paper but it was the only one I could find that appears applicable. It is US patent number 7246356, filed on Jan 29, 2003 (that's not too long after FCS was released and way before FMS2) and issued on Jul 17, 2007.
The inventors list is a who's who of Flash and FMS and includes Slavik Lozben, Pritham Shetty, Jonathan Gay, Stephen Cheng and Bradley Edelman.

I'm not sure what implications (if any) this patent may have for the likes of Red5, Wowza and other RTMP servers but it certainly appears that Adobe wants to protect their intellectual property at least on paper and 'just in case'.

You can now download a comprehensive (over 50 pages!) long white paper from the Flash Media Server 3 product page (click the White paper link on the right or simply click here).
I've only read about half of the document so far and while it contains a good dose of marketing material it is also a great overview of what FMS3 is and what it can deliver in terms of features and performance. The document describes virtually every server feature in detail and also includes some interesting and highly anticipated benchmark tests. To sum those up: FMS3 kicks FMS2's butt. Or to put it differently:
"Notice that with more percent CPU utilization, you can deliver more streams. The graphs were limited to 1Gbps and never reached 100% CPU. Higher data rates resulted in faster saturation, while lower data rates used more CPU to deliver similar connections."

But there was something else that caught my eye in this document, it was one single word on page 8... and I'll cover that in a separate post.

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).

Tune into Freecaster.tv to see if the Terje's Big Air record of 9.8 meters will be broken this weekend at The Oakley Arctic Challenge.
The Live stream on Freecaster.tv will begin at 18.30 CET on Thursday and 10.30 (CET) on Saturday so there's no excuse to miss this crucial event.

Watch it all on http://freecaster.com/1000009_1003849

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Seth Schoen has posted an article on the upcoming - as he calls it - DRM features of Flash Media Server 3.
Make of DRM as a technology what you like but I think the author has missed the point here, or does not understand the purpose of RTMPE, the new encrypted flavor of Adobe's Real Time Messaging Protocol. FMS3 doesn't actually apply any kind of DRM to the video content itself, it merely secures the transmission and thereby circumvents content from being intercepted in transit, a process that's similar to the way that your credit card information is being transmitted to a payment provider when you buy things online - anyone listening in on that transmission will see just garbage that would take years to decrypt.

Influxis are now offering hosting for the full version of FMIS 3 on their website, and have upgraded their plans' specs accordingly. They have also introduced a new tier of shared hosting plans called Enterprise for contract-free , large scale needs featuring resources just shy of going to a full dedicated environment. Any current customers who are on a FMS 2 account, can request to upgrade their account to FMIS 3 for free.
Customers also get access to a variety of turn-key applications, including the newest TV station application, and you can fined the admin demo here.

The Wowza team today announced a preview release of Wowza Media Server Pro which adds support for H.264/AAC playback as well as AMF3.
Looks like this space is hotting up and it didn't take the Wowza guys long to implement this feature. While there is no support for live H.264 streaming just yet it marks a significant step for Wowza. Whether or not we will ever see RTMPE implemented by servers other than FMS3 remains to be seen.

Adobe have released an update to Flash Media Server 2 which brings the server up to version 2.0.5.
Besides several minor bug fixes this release patches a possible vulnerability caused by a DOS attack. If you are running FMS2 you should update your server now with the patch - it appears to be a full reinstall but you can of course keep your applications and configurations, just make sure you back them up first.

If you haven't heard of the JW FLV Media Player yet then you must have been offline for the last year or two. It is is without doubt the most widely used Flash Video player on the net and best of all it's open source and free to use for non commercial projects. A Creative Commons License starts at a mere 20 Euros.

Highlights of the most recent update include:
1. MP4 (H.264) mimetype detection in playlists.
2. Automatic MP4 / FLV selection based upon plugin version with the "fallback" flashvar.
3. Better scaling and positioning of the "recommendations" screen.
4. Lots of bugfixes, notably with the often-appearing "activity" icon and with the javascript API.

The JW FLV Media Player is built with Adobe's Flash is an easy and flexible way to add video and audio to your website. It supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, but also MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RTMP and HTTP (Lighttpd) streaming, RSS, XSPF and ASX playlists, a wide range of flashvars (variables), an extensive javascript API and accessibility features.

Check out the JW FLV Media Player.

Two words: jaw dropping. Check out this demo (double click to go full screen!) by Fabio 'I eat codecs for breakfast' Sonnati. Encoded at a mere 500bkit/sec this demonstrates just how well the H.264 codec can perform at low bitrates. Check Fabio's blog for more details and watch out for more upcoming demos.
I wonder if he will share his encoding settings with us. One thing I can guarantee already is that he set smoothing to true ;-)

I was just forwarded this link - and yes now I'm blushing a bit ;-) Granted, this puts a positive marketing spin on things but I totally agree that the stream looked great. I stand by my comments that it was the best live stream I've ever watched, and no I don't know what the exact resolutions were and to be honest I don't care that much. Adobe is right in this case, experience matters and this was a good one. I must be right because even my wife said so! Hopefully there will be more such events to come and we will try and push the envelope of what can be done with live Flash video.
Thanks to everyone involved.

Very briefly, here's a link to the FMS3 Live Docs. Add this to your bookmark collection - and take a peek and avoid getting publicly RTFMed when posting on various forums or mailing lists ;-)

Adobe have today released Flash Media Server 3. The server now ships in two editions, the Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3 (FMSS) is ideal if all you want to do is serve up live or on demand video while the Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3 (FMIS) gives you access to all features including video recording, server side Shared Objects and more. FMSS retails at USD $995 while FMIS will set you back USD $4500. Both editions now provide unlimited bandwidth and connections - thank goodness for that.
If you have pre-ordered the server then you should have received a download email this morning. Everyone else can download the free 10 connection developer edition from the Adobe website once they update the download page later today.
So is FMS3 really as performant as the marketing blurb would have you believe? I think it may be, as a friend of mine who runs one of my video chat applications just tld me that he currently observing the following figures: 400 users logged on / 13mbit throughout / cpu 5%. Not bad!

Or streaming over download; or Flash over P2P, or online over offline. Who knows, read whatever you like into the fact that 8 times more people access the BBC's iPlayer content via the browser based streaming version (Flash video) rather than the Windows-only, P2P based download player for which the Beeb had received a lot of bad press. Why didn't they listen to me from the start? :-)
For those who don't know, the BBC now offers all TV content for online viewing, on demand for up to one week after it has aired. sorry, but the iPlayer is only accessible if you are in the UK. Silly, I know but then I don't make the rules.

There's a long standing post on Tink's blog about the lack of support for OSX by Flash Media Encoder (FME). While I initially had little luck getting FME to recognize any connected camera in Parallels I have since noticed (in a proper DOH moment) that USB devices often need enabling separately under Parallels.
The quick and easy fix to get FME running under Parallels is therefore to simply click the little USB icon (see image) and choose the camera you wish to use (for example 'Built-in iSight). Once you've done that you can use your iSight or other chosen camera under Parallels with FME.

...and this one even works on my Mac!
After having received heavy criticism for rolling out a download based video player which only worked on Windows, the BBC have now teamed up with Adobe and launched the beta version of their new Flash and FMS powered streaming video player, niftly names iPlayer (has Apple sued them yet?).
No longer need UK based viewers miss recent episodes of The Mighty Boosh or Spooks, as virtually all BBC programs are archived and available online for up to 7 days after they have aired.
As some of you may know it is compulsory in the UK (if you own a TV) to pay a yearly license fee (roughly GBP 100 or thereabouts), the so called TV License, with which the BBC is funded. A lot of money but it also means no advertising and on occasion quite reasonable programming, at least compared to German TV, whose private broadcasters have become unwatchable (even their websites look like the home shopping channel...).

While the iPlayer's content is only available to UK viewers (legally that is, we all know where to get our content from I presume) there are plans for an international version in the future. May I just add that restricting viwership to the UK seems plain stupid to me while the BBC's satellite signal can be picked up all over Europe anyway!?

Ok, I am going way off topic but take this away: having the BBC use Flash and FMS for their iPlayer is huge and gives our much loved platform a great push and massive exposure. There's also no need to log into the site anymore - it just works (even on Linux), as expected, where previously only users with Windows XP using IE were able to access the iPlayer's content (wasn't that a great idea). In this case it seems that common sense has prevailed, and that doesn't happen too often these days.

My main development machine is a Wintel iMac running Leopard and Windows XP, the latter of which is normally fired up in Parallels (rarely in Bootcamp).
The main downside of this setup in my opinion was the fact that the FMS applications directory resided on the XP virtual machine which meant that every time I had to make a change to a server side script I had to either edit it directly in XP or (as I prefer) make my changes in OSX but then had to copy the file over to the FMS applications directory in XP. So I thought to myself 'wouldn't it be nice if I could somehow map my OSX development directory to FMS and use that folder as the main applications directory for my FMS apps?'.

I knew that folders can be shared between OSX and XP (the former being the host OS and the latter the guest OS) but I had little hope it would actually work. Well guess what, it worked and it was really easy to set up.

Firstly (and I did this a while ago) I configured my XP virtual machine to use Bridge Networking, which means that the XP virtual machine is treated like a physical machine on my local network. I assigned it a static IP (in my 10.0.0 range) and started FMS. From then on I could connect to FMS via rtmp://10.0.0.9 from OSX.

Back in OSX and in Parallels I chose Edit > Virtual Machine > Shared Folders and added a user defined shared folder (in my case it was /Users/stefan/Documents/dev/fms) which holds all my FMS projects. I also ticked the Global sharing checkbox. I wanted this shared folder to act as my FMS applications folder and I gave it a share name of 'fms'.
Back in XP I fired up notepad and opened conf\_defaultRoot_\_defaultVHost_\Vhost.xml in my FMs install directory and configured my appsdir as follows:

To be honest I did not think that this would work at this stage... But after restarting FMS I was able to run FMS on XP inside Parallels with the applications directory mapped to the OSX partition and I'm now able to do all my FMS work from within OSX without having to touch XP (must be a good thing). I use the admin console to view traces and issue restarts as normal, also from OSX.
Of course the FMS virtual machine must be running while you want to use FMS it but that's kind of obvious. This setup works well for me and while I am still getting used to OSX (oh yes it has its moments...) I can at least feel at home as far as FMS goes.

Good morning Flashers. It's official: Flash Media Server 3 will be released in and it will improve pricing dramatically (yay!).

New Server Editions
This has been a long time coming and it marks a huge step forward for FMS as a platform. There will be no more bandwidth or connection limitations (instead it's all you can eat so to speak) and there will be two server editions which simplify the whole offering greatly: Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server and Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server. A free developer edition is also available.
As you may have guessed, Flash Media Streaming Server will allow you to - wait for it - stream video (both live and on-demand) while Flash Media Interactive Server basically presents the current feature set of FMS2 (and then some more), the swiss army knife of media servers which supports not only streaming but also has scripting capabilities, server side remote objects, and everything you are used to to date. This means that Flash Media Streaming Server (FMSS) is basically a stripped down version of the Flash Media Interactive Server, and it will cost less too (and pricing was a major sore point to date). This makes sense, because so far you had to pay for all features even if all you wanted to do was push video.

Pricing
FMSS will set you back a mere USD $995 while FMIS costs USD $4,500. Combined with the dramatic licensing improvements this means that the fully features Flash Media Interactive Server is much better value for money while Flash Media Streaming Server will allow you to push video for less than a thousand bucks. What's your excuse now for not using Flash video?
If you are like me and want to build not only video features but also throw in a bit of collaboration and multi user trickery then the Flash Media Interactive Server (let's call it FMIS) is for you. And get this: FMIS can be configured as Origin/Edge as well as standalone, which means the price point for large scale deployments has been totally slashed by about 90%.
In terms of other caps there's only the usual CPU restrictions which are in line with other platforms: FMSS supports up to 4 CPUs or cores per license (allowing for a dual CPU, dual core setup per license) while FMIS allows up to 8 CPUs or cores. This means that CPU restrictions have also been relaxed when compared to FMS2 (which all of a sudden seems really unattractive :-).

New Features
There are of course a host of new features too, such as massive performance improvements (which effectively improve value for money even further), support for H.264 streaming, added security features, streaming to mobile via Flash Lite 3 and a bunch more. There's a side by side comparison chart here.

There is also a great article and podcast with Kevin Towes, FMS Product Manager, here.

Flash Media Server 3 is due to ship in early 2008. The full press release is here, the product page here.

Flash Media Encoder 2 (FME) has just been released. FME is a FREE live broadcasting tool and designed to enable you to capture live audio and video while streaming it in real-time to Flash Media Server (FMS).
It uses the high quality VP6 codec (and chances are that H.264 will be added to support the Flash Player's upcoming new codec) and also adds MP3 audio encoding, a much requested feature. On top of that, FME can also be tightly integrated into your streaming infrastructure with command-line control both locally and through a remote connection. Auto-restart after power failures or other system re-starts helps ensure that your live streams are reliably available.
You can download FME here.

Here is a really interesting demo by Nigel Pegg covering the next version of Adobe Connect which features a totally overhauled UI built in Flex. Nigel is also showing the upcoming CoCoMo service which allows developers to leverage the Connect backend using a set of Flex component that will enable developers to built custom collaboration applications - in many ways similar to FMS applications.
I won't be starting a rant here and I've mentioned previously that CoCoMo is both exciting and scary at the same time. Combined with the features outlined for Pacifica it seems that pretty much everything that FMS provides right now in terms of capabilities (apart from the video delivery features) will also be provided by either CoCoMo or Pacifica. I have yet to make up my mind whether this a good thing or not.
I've just returned from MAX and I have some more info on Pacifica and CoCoMo shortly, alongside details of Adobe's upcoming DRM solution for Flash video. Stay tuned.

We all know that Adobe is pushing put new products and services at an insane rate these days. Apart from announcing Share at MAX in Chicago there were two other products which caught my attention and which are very exciting and a bit scary at the same time: Pacifica and CoCoMo.
Let me summarize what I know so far about these two products/services and then tell you why I think some of it is a little scary.