Any of you Lost fans out there notice that you can now watch Lost, the final season and lots of other shows on ABC.com now testing Adobe Flash player to stream this episode. That's right - no more extra downloads are needed to watch this great show on ABC.com in amazing high quality.
Nice job ABC!
Today, we released Stratus 2 RTMFP introduction service with full support RTMFP Groups. With this updated service, developers can start exploring a full set of Peer Assisted Networking functionality within Flash player 10.1 and AIR 2.0.
You can access your Developer key and more details here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/stratus/
Adobe® Stratus 2 enables peer assisted networking using the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) within the Adobe Flash® Platform. RTMFP is the evolution of media delivery and real time communication over the Internet enabling peers on the network to assist in delivery. Stratus was first introduced in 2008 as a rendezvous-only service that allowed clients to send data from client to client without passing through a server. Adobe Flash Player 10, which debuted peer assisted networking, has been adopted today by over 90% of all internet connected PCs.
We have some new articles in the works, and sample applications coming soon, but you can start using the new service right now.
For details on RTMFP Groups, please visit this site:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/stratus/rtmfpgroups.html
For support, you can use the Adobe Stratus forums here:
2010 is going to be an exciting year for Video on the web. Last year we saw un-precidented investment into new businesses using Video to drive new revenue streams. Studios and broadcasters enabled more content to be made available on the web, and in Flash using content protection measures such as RTMPe + SWFVerification. In 2010, you can expect even more.
Epix (a JV between Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate) was a great example of a new business choosing the Adobe Flash Platform to provide access to over 3,000 films using Flash Media Server, and the Dynamic Streaming experiences to serve a stunning experience for the end consumer.
Yesterday, Epix announced another distribution Partner, Cox Communications - providing reach to an additional 5 million subscribers starting in April. You can read their release here.
We just released a case study for Medici.tv describing how they've used Flash and Flash Media Server to deliver over 100 live concerts each year to a live audience of 80,000 each time. They launched the service back in May 2008, and have served 3.4 million free live webcasts of concerts from around the world.
If you haven't seen this experience, you have to visit their site: http://www.medici.tv/. As soon as you reach the site, you get full-browser video with interactive overlays, that let you browse details about the concert, and search their site - without leaving the experience. The sound quality is great, and so is the video quality.
Here's a screenshot
The streams are encoded from 500kbps through to 1.2Mbps from HD cameras encoded using Kulabyte Xtreme. The quality looks great in both fullscreen, and in the browser.
Today we released our 3rd service pack for Flash Media Server 3.5 (now v3.5.3). This service pack includes many bug fixes and performance improvements for DVR, Dynamic Streaming and playback. The release also includes security fixes to correct critical vulnerabilities in previous versions.
You can download the update and review the release notes here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashmediaserver/downloads_updaters.html
This version of Flash Media Server includes significant fixes for DVR that will make it easier to deploy in large scale networks, and includes support for SWFVerification within the C++ plug-ins. We also addressed issues that caused performance issues when streaming live content and when heavy updates of shared objects occurred. We also addressed issues when trying to use Dynamic Streaming (multibitrate) with a DVR-enabled live stream.
The FLVCheck tool was also updated in this release to detect more errors with corrupt MPEG4 files including unrecognized box versions, no sync sample box and invalid segments.
Flash Media Server 3.5.3 has full support for the smart buffer management controls introduced in Adobe Flash player 10.1. These controls include support for seeking within the buffer, stepping through a video, slow and fast playback in the buffer as well as re-establishing a connection without interrupting the stream. You can find more details about the buffer enhancements in the Flash Player 10.1 ActionScript 3 API documentation now available on Adobe Labs. You can review the buffer management updates in Flash player 10.1 here.
We are currently working with our global CDN partners to make 3.5.3 available as soon as possible.
