It has been a long time since the last post here that had any “real” content. In my opinion. Parroting updates to software we use because people visit here regularly to see pertinent content on Flash Media Server or Wowza or Flash video and live communications, doesn’t count. While important, I’m not actually providing much value to the reader. It has bugged me for a while so I thought I would finally put a quick post together to explain why there has been a lack of updates.

First up.. we’re busy. I can most definitely say “we” now because I have a team put together now that sticks together, rather than here sometimes and sometimes not. Literally, there is so much work out there that I could happily hire on a couple more people and probably only then be slightly comfortable that I have the current workload under my thumb. As it is though, there just isn’t much talent out there that fits the bill. At least not that I can find..

With that, I have to say that there are some very particular trends to take note of. If you visit this blog to hear about FMS and Wowza stuff then this is important as we get a lot of trend like stuff come our way which allows us to keep a good finger on the pulse of the industry.

First up, and least surprising I think, is that HTML5 is on the rise. It’s easy to go up when you start at zero though. That said, the amount of requests that come alongside the requests for other work to go with it are going up. To be more precise clients are looking to have video work on the lowest common denominator, iOS. I say the lowest because it is the one device out there that supports the least amount of video types or communication processes. You get the browser and apps. Most clients want to build in the browser and I’m seeing many shy away from creating a dedicated app. Which is an interesting trend to me. My guess is that they know it is expensive and you are tied to one device with that app. What I always have to remind them of though is that if we create one app for iOS, we can easily port that over to Android and most likely it will run in the browser as a Flash app too. Handy.

I think the other thought that goes through their minds is that if you build a pay app for iOS, that you lose 30% of your profits to Apple (even if they don’t need it thanks to 100 billion in the bank). Either way though, that’s lovely capitalism for you and such is the way of business at this point in time. Having a web only app takes away that limitation and you can then have subscription services that don’t have the top skimmed off.

That’s just my opinion of what clients may be thinking, it may be way off.

The next trend I see is wanting to do more and more in HTML5 and then realizing that you can’t. It really brings a client down. More precisely, clients want to do live streaming and live communication. Not possible in the browser of iOS/html5, despite all the iOS fanatics that would claim that HTML5 would be a Flash killer. Maybe in some circles, like the lower end stuff, but not live communication. That’s for sure. It will be interesting to see where that goes in the coming years.

To go with all that, because they came to market first and cornered it, I see a very strong trend for client to start out with and also move off to Wowza rather than FMS. In fact, I have only seen maybe two projects (out of many many..) for FMS in the last two years I think. The current demand is increasingly on Wowza and I don’t expect that to change. As sad as it is (in a way, I’m not actually sad), I think FMS is dead. The only thing it is marginally useful for at this point is P2P handshake connecting. Even that though can be done in other ways (you can build your own service if you want for no cost), and in turn FMS then really has no purpose in comparison to a far superior product at a quarter of the cost.

I can’t understand why Adobe isn’t changing their stance on FMS pricing. It is priced so far out there that clients nowadays just don’t even consider it anymore. If a client ever comes to me with an FMS project, the first thing I ask is if they have looked at Wowza. They haven’t, then they do and then they ask if there is a catch of some sorts. There isn’t, other than the fact that they have found the better product and it will cost them less.

So, trends to HTML5 video for iOS mainly, trends away from FMS that have been going on for a while now to Wowza, trends to get live streaming and live apps to work on ALL devices. Makes perfect sense writing it out in one simple paragraph of course. This is what I see happening and the flood of work is powerful and says a lot of where skills are needed. I’m perpetually amazed at the amount of devs out there that can only do one thing. While that is good in a way to be an absolute expert at one thing, I would never hire somebody like that. To give an example of that, I hired on a Flex dev who knew a bit of PHP, mySQL, JS, HTML etc kind of thing. He now is far more aware of PHP, has learned Coldfusion and increased his JS skills in the few months of working together. That is the last trend I think I would comment on, is that there is no way you can get away with being a mono-language developer. You must have multiple skills and be good at most of them, or at least good at figuring out how to be good at them for the task at hand.

The trend is to be fluid, tech changes fast, projects grow and demands of clients change as fast as you change your socks. Hopefully you change your socks often, or that’s not going to make much sense… Anyways, to wrap it up, if you happen to be wondering on what to work on next, I think the above would be a good indicator of where work is at. You may need to look to find it if you don’t have the connections, but overall there is no shortage of work if you know how to find it or know those that are asking for it.

No complaints here of course, Wowza work rocks. I love it. I’ll try to post more thoughts on these types of things as I go along. I have tons of tips and ideas to put out that will hopefully help those that are getting in to this area. FMSGuru.com has floundered a bit lately but I’m really hoping to get back to that too.

So, apologies for the silence, as I mentioned above, work has gone through the roof and ends up leaving less time for idle chat/blog posts.

A quick post to note that FMS 4.5.2 has been released. You can grab that here.

Release notes on it are here. Although I don’t think it’s even worth clicking that link as there is practically nothing in it worth reading. In fact, here is the only tidbit:

This release includes support for HTTP Streaming failover scenarios to offer robust playback, in
the face of server-side streaming problems.

Unlike Wowza’s release notes for their last update which took up over a page of new and fixed items, the FMS release notes has 2 pages of “these are known issues”.

What the?? It’s of no wonder to me why 9 out of 10 clients of ours are using Wowza Media Server. The 1 out of 10 clients are sitting there wondering if they are using the right platform. Actually.. as far as I can tell, it’s the p2p functionality that is keeping them there. If Wowza ever got into that part I would guess that would be the end of demand for FMS other than from major CDNs which is what has always been the main target for Adobe anyways regarding FMS.

Anyways, there you are. There’s an update that fixes one thing. In 5 months.

Title: More control, better reach: Advanced Multicast with David Hassoun

Date and Time: April 20, 2012 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (GMT-7 Mountain Time US & Canada)

Connect Room: http://realeyes.adobeconnect.com/fmsug

This session will immerse you into the world beyond the basics of multicast video using the Flash Media Server. We will discuss the inherent limitations and management constraints of multicast as it is out of box, and talk about what needs to be done to truly control and extend it. Gaining an understanding through real world solutions of what you can do with multicasting with a focus on corporate or enterprise solutions. Covering concerns such as users and network segmenting, load testing, and real-time monitoring. We will also take a look at the tools we have made here at RealEyes to solve such issues and discuss how we built them. Come learn where multicast out of box begins and where you can take it to truly provide a powerful solution to your video advanced delivery needs.

A couple of days back Wowza pushed out an update for Wowza Media Server. Currently at version 3.1, here are the changes and bug fixes made. I think the biggest item to note is that the nDVR feature has made it out of beta. Nice. Lots of stuff for Apple devices and good general improvements all around. Jumping from 3.0.5 to 3.1 is a big deal.

Head over here for the updated installer. Or just grab the update files from here if you are updating from 3.0.x

There’s an FMS Usergroup meeting on Tuesday, March 13 coming up: Getting Familiar with Flash Media Server

Date: Tuesday, March 13
Time: noon EST, 11:00am Central, 9:00am Pacific
RSVP: http://fms.groups.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=post.display&postid=41402

FMSUG is thrilled to have Joseph Labrecque, Adobe Education Leader and Adobe Community Professional presenting at our March meeting.

This presentation will provide an introduction to Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 and the use of streaming video with the Flash platform. We will have a look at a number of topics, including; setting up a local development server instance, testing RTMP, HDS, and HLS streaming with sample files, using the Flash Media Server administration console, extending HDS/HLS to tap into the applications directory to share RTMP-ready streams over HTTP, have a look at a variety of playback options including Strobe and the OSMF, provide some pointers on encoding tools and settings for video, examine some extended uses for Flash video playback through real-world application development scenarios.

This is a real-time meeting, so you’ll have the opportunity to ask Joseph questions so that you can get more familiar with Flash Media Server.

RSVP: http://fms.groups.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=post.display&postid=41402

The latest version of Wowza Media Server has been out for a week now (Feb 16th) and available here:

http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php?197-software-updates

The release note are here: Looks well worth getting.

http://www.wowza.com/forums/content.php?377

Wowza Media Server has just been updated to 3.0.4, if you are running anything below that then I recommend going to pick up the latest as there are a lot of fixes and improvements and enhancements going on. I don’t think the Wowza guys ever rest.. Nice job!

Go grab the update here.

Release notes are here

Hey Everybody, I thought I would write up a few things to wrap 2011 and get on with 2012 here at FMSGuru.com and Solid Thinking Interactive.

First up, thank you everybody for the visits, compliments, comments and sometimes work that you have brought when coming to check out what we have here. Product sales have improved year after year (so have the products I think) and there are tons of requests for mods and new products altogether. I can tell you that we are working as hard as we can in that area and more. Every little bit and piece that improves this small niche community is really important, so once again, thank you very much.

2011 saw a total of 34 new free video tutorials. That’s pretty good at 2.8 per month! Just under one per week essentially.. I plan on improving on that this year for sure. There is so much information to be put out as both Flash Media Server and Wowza Media Server are growing all the time and new techniques get figured out on almost a daily basis.

Just in case you missed the last two tutorials of the year, I managed to get one out on both servers:

Overriding the play() method server side to limit play time with Wowza

Developing server side code on FMS to check if a live stream is available

2011 brought a brand new website too. We’re going into the 4th year for FMSGuru.com and it was about time a facelift happened. In conjunction we also released a new product, STi Video Recorder for Wowza Media Server HD Edition v3 , a very cool video recording application that works on Wowza. With those out of the way we can definitely concentrate on more free video tutorials, articles and of course product updates and new products altogether. We have a lot of ideas and a lot of requests coming in on almost a daily basis. We listen to them all so please don’t hesitate to ask if we have done or can do something. We probably have done it or are going to!

2012 is going to bring all kinds of new tutorials, articles, product updates and products. I fully expect the community to grow as the demand for this particular technology continues to grow out of control, there has never been a better time to be involved in live media/communication and streaming video. It’s amazing.

So stay tuned for some more updates soon!
Thanks again,
Graeme

There are two new tutorials up on FMSGuru.com, one on Wowza Media Server and one on Flash Media Server:

Overriding the play() method server side to limit play time with Wowza

In this tutorial we talk about using the play() method on the server side in Wowza to limit how long a client can play a stream. This is more powerful than doing it client side because you have full control from a security standpoint in that a malicious SWF also can not play the stream longer than you specifiy in the server side code. Wowza Media Server provides a lot of options with security and control over the end user’s experience, this is just one of many techniques to take advantage of to make sure your apps stay secure and doing what you want. Keep in mind the concept explained is basic but there are a lot of options from here.

Developing server side code on FMS to check if a live stream is available

In this tutorial we cover making an application that will allow you to check to see if a live stream is available before trying to play it. This tutorial requires Flash Media Interactive or developer versions as we will be taking advantage of some server side coding to get the job done. The concept in this tutorial can be applied in many ways but essentially we are going to ask the server if a live stream is available, if it isn’t then a warning is shown. The server side coding will also be setup to automatically keep track of live streams as they are published and unpublished. Client side is AS3 in Flex.

A quick post to those that are using FMS, the latest update 4.5.1 is out now, check that out here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashmediaserver/downloads_updaters.html

Release notes for that are here (PDF) but to summarize they’ve fixed a bunch of bugs, most seemingly important of correcting issues where 24×7 streaming to HDS or HLS wasn’t working right. That’s good, I’ve seen lots of posts about that kind of thing, core rollover and all that. RTMPE has been improved for protection of RTMP streams, you’ll need the last flash player for that.

All in all, some good improvements and should stabilize a few other items and features of the software. Go grab it and be careful when updating as you have to manually put back your values in your XML files etc. Keep a backup of all files. I cover some of that stuff in one of my latest tutorials on FMSGuru.com actually:

Installation and the Basics of Flash Media Server 4.5