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If you are like me and have slowly had enough of Vista then you may have purchased a Mac by now. I run Windows XP in Parallels on my Mac, largely due to the fact that Flash Media Server (FMS) is not available for Mac. Of course you can develop your apps on a Mac but you'd have to use a remote FMS server for testing. Not anymore.
Once you have installed Windows and FMS in Parallels you can do one of two things:
- configure your virtual machine to use Shared Networking, the default option. I pulled some of my hair out though because I could not connect to FMS from my Mac - until I disabled the XP firewall (do this at your own risk)
- use Bridged Networking in Parallels which puts both machines onto the same subnet. This turns the Parallels OS (XP in my case) into a machine that appears as standlone on the network, getting its IP via DHCP (from my router) just like any physical box. This is running sweet now. I also had to open port 1935 on the XP firewall (yes I had enabled it again, I'm good).

In fact the old PC of mine (running Vista) also got the treatment: I installed another copy of FMS on that one too and configured it as an Origin Server (which means I did not have to configure anything ;-)). The XP Virtual Machine on my Mac inside Parallels was set up as an FMS Edge server and whoppaaah, it works. I can connect to the Edge from anywhere on my home network and it successfully runs up the (small) chain to the Origin. Why I did this? Not sure, I'm probably mad but it helps me to get used to the whole Edge/Origin concept. It's pretty neat actually and I've also started configuring Suse Linux 10.2, again in Parallels. FMS seems to run fine on that. Anyone else out there with a similar setup? Thought not ;-)
I guess next I could try and map the FMS cache directory to my new NAS device, which would make it kinda like a mini Datacenter in rural England...

With a bit of luck I should soon hold the Adobe Certified Instructor for Flash Media Server certificate in my hands. Having spent the last 3 days at Adobe's UK headquarters at Stockley Park near London and having had my teaching skills evaluated by Edward Apostol I feel confident that I've made the cut and will soon be an ACI for FMS - the first and so far only one in the UK!
Edward is a fantastic instructor and I have a long long way to go to be as effective as he is. It was clear that he has a lot of teaching experience which is something that I'm lacking. But hey, one has to start somewhere, right?

In a move that may send some warnings signs in Adobe's direction, NetMasters, a company that delivers high-end services for Flash video on-demand audio/video streaming, live webcasts and other rich media productions, today announced that it is adding Wowza Media Server to its service offering.
As some of my readers may know, Wowza Media Server is a Flash video compatible streaming server which utilizes the same RTMP protocol as Adobe's Flash Media Server, making its output consumable by the Flash Player and which offers true streaming capabilities. The Wowza platform can appear to be a lower priced alternative to FMS, although I am not sure how a feature by feature comparison between the two platforms stacks up. NetMasters has obviously made good experiences with Wowza and is now offering it as a cost-effective solution alongside Adobe FMS.
The full press release can be downloaded here (PDF).

Disclosure: NetMasters and Wowza are advertising partners of this website

Geek fact of the day: it's been 5 years exactly since the release of Flash Communication Server 1.0 (now known as Flash Media Server 2).
Could someone remind me in 5 years time to put up another post on this? ;-)

Going hand in hand with the relaunch of the Adobe Developer Center comes a white paper by Kevin Towes, Technical Product Manager for Flash Media Server, describing video content protection measures using Flash Media Server (FMS).
The PDF document comes in at over 20 pages and it contains a lot of valuable info, both on the differences between progressive delivery and streaming as well as the methods that some technologies such as the latest RealPlayer deploy to grab FLV video files. The reader learns how the extensive scripting capabilities of FMS allow for a 'custom fit' security solution and even include a simple and ingenious way of preventing stream capturing through tools such as Replay Media Catcher.

Please do not be put off my the technical nature of this document and believe me when I say that most of the methods mentioned there are actually pretty simple to implement and deploy. Feel free to contact me with any questions or simply leave a comment below.

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.

Following reading this article I had a closer look at Adobe Visual Communicator 3, the product formerly known as Serious Magic's Visual Communicator.
I have known about the product for some time but hadn't yet noticed that Adobe added or will add the ability to stream the newcast style presentation that users can create with Visual Communicator directly to Flash Media Server. Adobe states: The product can '[...] stream live Flash video presentations over the Internet using Adobe Flash Media Server'.

This is great news and it further expands the featureset and tools available for live Flash video broadcasts and events. For examaple, the product supports up to 3 connected cameras at once which will allow for back and forth switching in an interview setting. Of course all this can also be recorded, the live feature is more of an add-on really.

There's a lot more to this tool: it offers hundreds of customizable graphics, music and special effects to create video presentations that look like a television newscast. When presenting in front of a backdrop, users can digitally replace the background with an image or video. The teleprompter allows users to speak confidently without missing key points or memorizing lines.

I recommend you check out Visual Communicator 3.

Here's another video from video.onflex.org. In it you can see Deeje Cooley demoing some more of the upcoming Adobe Media Player, codenamed Philo. Watch the video here.

Enjoy.

The registration for Streaming Media Europe is now open and the provisional programme has also been released.

Streaming Media Europe, which takes place on October 4th and 5th 2007 in London, features over 50 international speakers focusing on both corporate and consumer business, technology and content issues involving online video in the enterprise, advertising, media and entertainment and broadcast markets.

I will be part of it again this year with a preconference workshop (October 3rd) on - what else - Flash video of course. This time though I will concentrate on live video, which has gained great traction in the last few months. I will also summarize the workshop in a 1 hour session on October 5th.

Remember: it's not just about streaming. Streaming Media Europe features a range of intensive conference sessions and workshops that showcase the best and the brightest minds in the online video and content industries.
See you there!

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.

I've just made a worrying discovery: it seems that in some instances my preferred method of embedding a SWF file into a web page (I normally use SWFObject) can fail in quite a bad way for some users running IE7 on Windows - that's a lot of potential users that cannot see your SWF content.
I tend to test less and less on IE these days and instead concentrate on Firefox and while that's not such good practice it's usually no problem because of the fact that SWF run consistently across platforms and browsers. However in the last few days I have had several clients email me and reporting that some pages prompt them to upgrade their Flash Player despite them running Player 9 already. Even after installing the latest Player the problem persists. All users were running IE7 on Windows. The problem is described in more detail here.
It affected my machine too and I was unable to even run the SWFObject sample page in IE7 - it worked fine in Firefox. The page would simply display a message stating that I needed to upgrade my Flash Player. This really worried me as I was under the impression that SWFObject was a 100% reliable way to display SWFs, all the way through the Expressinstall process in case users do run an older version of the Player.

The way I managed to fix the issue (I don't know what or how it was caused) was to download this Flash Player installer and run it. After installation, the same page worked fine in IE7... And apparently the 'old' (but EOLAS prone) way of embedding SWFs also works which could mean that SWFObject is in some way less reliable than the old fashioned way of embed.

Of course I cannot ask users to download and run an executable just in case they have this Flash Player problem. I'm stumped now - should I ditch SWFObject? Is there a reliable workaround?

Please could you check this page in IE7 on Windows and report what you see by posting a comment. Thanks.

I've just received this job posting which I'm sure will be of interest to some of you.

POSITION:
We are looking for a highly motivated/experienced back-end FMS/Actionscript developer. Deep experience designing modular, object-oriented ActionScript is the key requirement; experience with Flash remoting or Flash Communication/Media Server experience is very highly desirable. The focus is on the back-end of Flash, although front end experience is also useful.

COMPANY
We are building a new type of communication platform. So far, the company has been funded by one of the founders of YouTube; the head of computer science at Stanford; and other top Silicon Valley angels. The company is incubated by Sequoia Capital, the #1 VC firm in the world that backed Google, Yahoo, Apple, Cisco, Oracle, YouTube etc.

The current team is six people, of which four are amazingly good developers (CTO was first in his class from Cornell etc.) Users love the product; there is a lot of interest from distribution partners and investors. The position is based in at Sequoia's offices in Menlo Park and is local/full-time with a competitive salary and stock options.

HOW TO APPLY
Send a resume to Serge on sfaguet@stanford.edu

Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion and not a confirmed detail by Apple or Adobe but I believe that the iPhone WILL run Flash and Flash Video. The reason for my assumption is a TV ad for the iPhone which I just watched at apple.com.

The ad is called 'Watered down' and makes a point of the fact that the iPhone does not show a watered down version of the internet but the internet as it is with most of its features. It seems that in my book and in that of Apple this includes Flash - if the ad is showing an actual iPhone running the actual New york Times site, which includes Flash Video! Check this image which I grabbed from the ad.
The circled area holds a SWF including Flash Video and apparently it's rendering fine.








Compare that with this image from the Keynote by Steve Jobs which also showed the NY Times site but without the Flash piece...

I think this observation is extremely promising. Apple cannot seriously call its internet device NOT watered down without Flash support - or maybe they can?. And if it does support Flash then we all know what this means, for example live video and audio, amongst an arsenal of other features. Who knows, we'll know one way or the other soon.
Oh and by the way anyone claiming they don't want an iPhone is lying. And I don't want one either.

As you've probably heard by now Adobe have posted a Flash Player 9 Update (beta) on Labs.

This update adds some cool features which are particularly interesting in regards to Flash Video support. Those are (and I quote):
Multi-threaded video decoding. The VP6 video codec will now run in a separate thread if a multi-core system is detected which leaves the main thread to do rendering and post processing of the video. With this true 1080p video is now possible on most modern dual core machines. Also, the responsiveness is improved with this change. The Sorenson codec on the other hand did not get this change for technical reasons.

It gets better:
Full-screen mode with hardware scaling. Probably the biggest new feature in the Flash Player Update. This leverages DirectX on Windows and OpenGL on OSX. There is an new API to control the behavior which was required since we could not change current behavior and we wanted to give the maximum flexibility possible.

More info here on Labs and also a cool video interview with the Jedi Master Tinic Uro.

Last week I made my way down to London with my mate Steve to attend Adobe Live, a free two-day event with product demos, workshops, networking and discussions.
We only had time for the first day which was the Developer's day and Steve took lots of photos with his new Digital SLR. Here are some of them - I added some comments.

A leading Medical Communications and Advertising Company in midtown Manhattan (NYC) seeks an advanced Flash Developer experienced in building dynamic, interactive web and CD-ROM applications for its healthcare clients. The winning candidate must have strong ActionScript experience. This is a full-time position. The hiring company company requires US Citizenship or greencard status, and is unable to support work visas.

REQUIREMENTS
Must have minimum 2+ years experience using Flash
Must be a proficient ActionScript 2.0 Object-oriented programmer with a working knowledge of development principles
In-depth knowledge of ActionScript to dynamically drive interfaces
Experienced in timeline based animation
Knowledge in delivering dynamic content in Flash using xml and/or Flash Remoting
Strong understanding of UI design
Must be detail-oriented
Understanding of web standards and optimization
Excellent code documentation skills
Creative problem solving
The ability to meet tight deadlines
Able to work with complex Photoshop documents to extract image assets
Experience with the following is a plus
Some experience with ASP or other server-side development languages such as JSP or PHP
Web page layout that includes HTML and CSS
Experience with digital video and sound editing software

A highly competitive salary and full benefits package awaits the winning candidate.

NOTE: The hiring company has engaged Jack Farrell & Associates to find the winning candidate for this position. Interested candidates should provide a resume by email to john@jackfarrell.com.
Thank you.

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.