Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Lite 3 mobile delivery: what I was waiting for

The IBC conference is over and Adobe announced great things. One for all the new Flash Media Server 3 that supports the following features :

• RTMPE : Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) will be enhanced with new, higher performance encryption to help to secure streamed media and communication.
•   H.264 support : Adobe Flash Media Server 3 will support streaming of industry standard H.264 and HE-AAC video and audio content to Flash Player, AIR and Adobe Media Player. FMS3 will also support enhanced seeking forH.264 content, which means you, can seek to any point within the video and start streaming quickly.
•   Improved live streaming
• Flex 3 and Flash CS3 support: The documentation and help systems have also been completely updated to support ActionScript 3 in Flex and Flash CS3.
• Stream republishing from server to server (stream push)
•   New C++ based plugin architecture

But my best feature is the mobile video delivery to Flash Lite 3 :  Adobe Flash Media Server will support both pre-recorded and live streaming to the Flash Lite 3 mobile platform. The same video
experience in the browser can now be delivered to mobile devices supporting Flash Lite 3.

You can't imagine how many clients in Italy (TIM, Three, Wind and so on) asked me for having the mobile support. And now we have !
Thanks Adobe !!   

Comments

[João Fernandes]

Hey Marco, is FL3 going to be able to pick the phone camera as a video source and stream it to a FMS3 server?

[Emanuele Cipolloni]

The only problem with FL3 is that there is no phone available yet that includes it and thanks to Adobe miopy it is not possible to upgrade mobile versions, so installed user user starts always at 0% with every new FL version and will stay in the 1 digit percent figure for a long time. "Three" had its share of problems with the concept of "video based telecom" which eventually led them to be put in the market to be sold and made other operators aware of the risks of such initiatives. If you want to stream H.264 (on which 3GP bases its format [actually H.263, but differences on mobile spec are negligible]) you can do it already with a large user base as most phone support 3GP playback, if operators didn't deployed anything based on that it is because market is not there, not because FL3 wasn't available. Also, I see a lot of people jumping up and down for H.264 support in Flash, but almost none of them have realized that to create and decode a H.264 steam there is nice pack of patents to deal with, but most important even to simply HOST H.264 streams you are supposed to pay a fee as clearly stated by the MPEG LA license. Also, Adobe made loud and clear that they will NOT allow third party to stream H.264 to their Flash player and cosidering the cost of FMS license this seems a pretty huge vendor lockin to me. Also, it is interesting to notice that both iPhone and iPod Touch do not include any form of Flash, I'm sure Apple knows what they are doing and beside some ridiculous statements from so called Flash evangelists, this hasn't stopped the iPhone to fly from the shelves.

[luke85]

Hi Marco!
Do you have any idea for the publication date of flashlite3?

[diegovolpe]

Hey Marco, what about multicast support?
I'd love to see FMS3 multicasting over satellite network.