Finally, a long time wished for feature made it into the just released Flash Player 10.3 preview version: Acoustic Echo Cancelation. With this feature, it's possible to create VoIP and video chat applications with better voice quality and less audio feedback.

In addition, 10.3 comes with a new integration feature called "Media Measurement" which allows for running real-time analytics over video content (supports RTMFP, RTMP, Multicast and HTTP) and direct interaction with Adobe Site Catalyst.

Also, the Flash Player Settings dialog is now a nativ control panel with the same look & feel as the rest of the operating system and the Local Storage management ("Flash Cookies") now integrates with Firefox 4, IE 8 and future versions of Chrome and Safari.

• Flash Player 10.3 Preview on Labs
• More info from Kevin Towes

Dirk.

Together with Adobe we're happy to announce the "Streaming Video on the Flash Platform Roadshow 2011". Don't miss this if you want to learn more about Flash Media Server 4, video streaming, content protection (DRM), building videoplayers on top of OSMF and so much more.

The first two stops will be Cologne and Munich, more to come soon. For more information and to register follow this link

Dirk.

As announced in January 2009, Adobe now published the specification for the former proprietary RTMP protocol. The specs can be downloaded for free from here, for more background information check Kevin Towes blog entry

The EULA is pretty clear on prohibiting two things: you may neither create "stream ripper" software based on the specs, nor create a software that cicumvents security/DRM measures implemented by Adobe (rtmpe, rtmps). You may of course build your own security/DRM scheme on top of the open RTMP specs

So: who is the first to create a AS3 only RTMP-client that does not use NetConnection?

Dirk

Yesterday I stumbled over a strange phenomena when dealing with the File object in Server Side ActionScript (SSAS). My task was to create a custom log file that stores chat messages for later use. The messages itself are plain String values sent through a NetConnection from Flex 3 chat clients running in Flash Player 9 - nothing too exciting.

First, I created a new server side File object. As Flash Player uses UTF-8 character encoding when serializing data I assumed it's enough to open the File with the utf8 type and in append mode on the server and then just writeln() to it. That worked well until some messages contained non-ASCII characters (e.g. Umlauts like ä, ö, ü). Then the output in the file was garbled. Further investigation showed that the bytestream written to the File object was UTF-8 encoded, but the file itself was not marked as being a UTF-8 encoded file.

I posted this to the fine FLASHMEDIA mailing list and shortly after a FMS engineer told me, that FMS does not automatically adds the necessary BOM (Byte Order Mark) signature to the File - even if it's opened in utf8 mode. The solution is to manually add the BOM signature to the very beginning of the file upon creation. Here's a code snippet:

This works fine - but still this feels like a workaround. IMHO the expected behaviour when opening a file in utf8 mode is that the File object will take care of doing this by itself.

Dirk.

Adobe just announced the "Flash Media Interactive Server Feature Explorer" on Devnet, a very cool AIR application to help you getting started with Flash Media Server 3.

The application was developed by Digital Primites and hosts "over 30 examples of streaming and multiway communication solutions, including basic server connection examples, complex video streaming, and authentication routines. You can also learn to build video messaging and VoIP solutions.

Indeed, that's impressive stuff so check it out!

Dirk.

If you want to record that Livestream on the serverside you need to add the following serverside ActionScript code to you main.asc file.

During the last week I did my first Flash Media Server 3 course for Adobe EMEA and I found out, why the prebuild LIVE-Application ist not able of recording a Live-Stream on the Server ... because there is a new undocumented parameter for the Application.xml file which is used inside the LIVE-Application:

<StreamManager>
  <StreamRecord override=”no”>false</StreamRecord>
</StreamManager>

Because the prebuild LIVE-Application is compiled to a signed FAR-File, you can not change this but you can use the new parameter for your own applications, if you do not want to allow serverside recording of live streams.

Sven.

In the past it really was a major problem to load test the Flash Media Server because all the traditional Loadtesting tools do not support the RTMP protocol.

But now, since the release of Flash Media Server 3, this is very easy. Inside the Tools Directory you will find the fmscheck.exe File. This is a tool which only accepts command line parameters, so an perfect candidate for scriptiung.

I have prepared to batches, one for a live screnario, one for a vod scenario:

VOD-szenario (Application “vod” with VideoFile “vidfile” must exist):

set /A counter = 0
:start
start /B fmscheck.exe –host localhost –app vod –play vidfile 0 all –timeout 360
set /A counter = %counter% + 1
IF %counter% LEQ 100 goto :start

LIVE-Szenario: (Application “live” with stream “livestream” muss exist)

set /A counter = 0
:start
start /B fmscheck.exe –host localhost –app live –play livestream any all –timeout 36000
set /A counter = %counter% + 1
IF %counter% LEQ 100 goto :start

Both batches are going to start 100 instances of fmscheck.exe. By using the Flash Media Server Console you can watch wthat happens. For a real Load Test you should use serveral different Client PCs and you have to do this in your LAN whicht should have 1 GBit otherwise you do not have enough Bandwith.

PS: FMSCheck.exe also can Loadtest the old FMS2 Server.