AVChat Software Product Blog

We’ve been hard at work on the new version of our Instant Messenger and oh boy do we have some updates for you.

But first of all let me thank you all for the valuable feedback we’ve got from you guys during the last months. We’ve learned a lot and as you’ll see we’ve put that feedback to good use.

Today we’re launching the 2.0 version of our IM. It’s a complete overhaul. It’s also the base for a lot of features that will be added in the future.

Here’s what’s new:

• Removed invitations system
• Send messages to offline and idle users
• New conversations tab
• Multi language
• New clean look
• Works over firewalls
• Temporarily removed audio/video chat (will be back soon)
• Reply Rate and X Unread Messages

No more invitations
The probability that 2 people that are interested in each other will be online at the same time on the same site is very small. So we’ve dropped the invitations system, added offline messages and a conversations tab.

Send messages to offline and idle users
You can now send a message to anyone weather they are online or not. This enables you to chat with all the people on the website, not with just the ones online.

New conversations tab
The conversations tab holds a list with all the people you’ve ever talked to. Want to go back to a conversation from 3 days ago? Just open the conversations tab and click on the user you want to talk to.

Multi language
The entire AVChat IM User interface now supports 3 languages: English, Spanish and Romanian. The correct language is used depending on the users settings in the browser. More languages will be added in the future.

New clean look
We’ve removed everything from the interface that we did not need. No more bubble text chat, no more useless UI elements, just the basic stuff. This makes our IM super fast.

View more screenshots at http://avchat.im/screenshots

Works over firewalls
The old IM was using a p2p network to send both text chat messages and video+audio data. That meant that a small portion of users (behind strange firewalls and networks) could not talk to anyone.

We’ve changed that. We’ve moved the text chat to HTML/JS so that anyone can at least text. We’ll keep the video chat in Flash/p2p (there’s no other way to do it) but enable it only when a connection between the 2 parties is possible.

Temporarily removed the video chat
Something had to go, we’ve dropped video chat for now but we’re adding it back in the next few weeks.

Reply Rate and X Unread Messages
These are only 2 of the features that we’ve added to enhance the IM experience on a website. We will ad more soon .

The Reply Rate represents how much that user is responding to incoming messages. We calculate and display the Reply Rate for each user.

“Alex has more than 50 unread messages”
Whenever a user has more than 50 unread messages a small warning will show up in the IM window so if you want to send this user new messages your expectations about how likely this person is to respond will be more accurate.

Screenshots:

We have screenshots of the new IM system up on our website at: http://avchat.im/screenshots

Demo website running AVChat IM:

We’ve setup a quick website (using SocialEngine 4) at http://avchat.im/community .

You need to create a free account and login before you can use the IM.

Here’s my profile page (Octavian Naicu) on the website. You can see my status (available/idle/offline) and ReplyRate on the left .

How to get the new version:

Login to your IM client area and use the new embed code and integration kits. You will see a new tab labeled Embed Code (2.0, new).

What happens with the old version:

The old IM (v1.0) will still function until 19th of September when it will be shut down.

What’s next:

• Friends/Favorites tab
• p2p audio video chat
• 1 click send message directly from the profile pages
• Location based stuff
• Detailed Reporting
• iPhone/Android compatibility
• Design Options
• Gifts

Final words

I am very exited about this release, It’s the first out of a series of releases that will make AVChat IM the best IM out there.

We now have 2 guys working full time on it, from now on things will move much more quickly.

Please use it, test it and send your feedback to contact@avchat.im. As always we’re very open to feedback from you guys.

To keep in touch follow our blog and our twitter account (@avchathq).

It seems there are quite a few issues with Adobe products running on the new  Mac OS X Lion

One that affects us the most is the fact that the Privacy modal window in Flash Player asking you for permission to access your webcam can not be used anymore. The buttons don’t click.

The Flash Player Privacy window is unusable in Mac OS X Lion

Our friends at http://www.userplane.com/ have posted a workdaround for it that involves going into your System Preferences.

Hopefully a new version of Flash Player will be released soon by Adobe that adresses this issue.

A week ago we’ve announced that Adobe will support h.264 video recording in the next version of Flash Player 11.

Since then we’ve made some tests .

Here’s our setup:

• Flash Player Incubator preview version
• a special build of our video recorder (HDFVR).
• Flash Media Server 4
• a Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD web cam.
• Run of the mill laptop with Dual Core Intel P8400 @ 2,26GHz CPU

Here are our conclusions:

• Recording HD (1280×720) H.264 video (main profile) maxes the  CPU  at about 20 fps. It would go higher in fps if I would have a better CPU.
• The sound is encoded with Speex, there’s no AAC option.
• On the media server the video+audio data is saved in a F4V file.
• The recording file can be played back right away trough streaming (sound plays ok).
• For progressive download/desktop playback you need to pass the new F4V file trough Adobe’s F4V Post Processor but there’s no sound. We’ve reported this issue to Adobe and they’re aware of it.
• Users will need Flash Player 11 or later to record h.264 video.
• We’ve not tested yet Red5 and Wowza.
• Both the Baseline (non cpu intensive) and Main (medium cpu intensive) h.264 profiles are supported. High Profile is not supported.
• All h.264 levels are supported up to 5.1.

That’s a good overview of what we’ve discovered so far.

We’ll be buying an 8 core desktop computer and a better webcam (the Logitech C910 1080p webcam) soon to do more tests .

PS: The Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD seems to be limited to 10fps when using the official Microsoft Lifecam drivers. We had to use the generic “USB Video Device” drivers from Windows to get it past 10fps.

Adobe has finally publicly announced that the next version of Flash Player will support H.264 encoding.

This means we’ll have higher better quality video chat/streaming/recording directly from the browser.

So far Flash Player only decoded such video content while for encoding it used a really old video codec ( Sorenson Spark).

More details:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/incubator/
http://corlan.org/2011/05/13/flash-player-10-3-for-desktop-and-mobile-is-out/
http://www.bytearray.org/?p=3066

This is great news everyone!!! I’ll provide more info as I go trough the details and try the beta .

In September we’ve been to iDate Paris to learn more about the dating industry in Europe! There, I’ve bumped into Patrick from Mötesplatsen.se (the best dating site in Sweden), a client of mine from like 5 years ago!

We’ve launched http://avchathq.com , an umbrella web site for all our activity and products. Go to http://avchathq.com to learn more about us and our company!

We have a resellers program, basically if you are a developer or a web development company you can get our products with up to 30% discount.

We have an affiliates program, if you refer clients to our web site you can get a 25% commission on every sale you generate.

We’re working hard on the new Instant Messenger: we’re working on the flash client, on the invitations system, on the ability to track online users. I know we’ve promised to launch the private beta in the summer but it had to be delayed a few months, it will probably be ready in November.

If you want to be included in the private beta for the IM go to http://avchat.im and sign up for the newsletter!

This morning at IBC in Amsterdam Adobe launched Flash Media Server 4.

There will be 3 editions (Streaming, Interactive and Enterprise) + the free Developers edition. Check out the comparison matrix to see what’s included in each!

Most notable improvements are:

• 64 bit support -> increased performance
• p2p/rtmfp support -> we’ll be able to do commercial p2p apps on top of FMIS4

Now the bad news:

• the price is the same, in the US  the Streaming edition is about $995.00 and the Interactive edition is about $4500 .
• the p2p/rtmfp goodies are only available in the Enterprise edition (very expensive) but hopefully Adobe’s FMIS hosting partners like influxis.com will offer rtmfp/p2p support as standard in their hosting offers.

More info:

• Press release
• Tom Krcha, Adobe evanghelist on FMIS4 launch
• FMIS 4 on Adobe’s web site

We get a lot of questions regarding support for peer 2 peer in our applications. This post will answer most of them!

The Stratus service

Right now the only way to add p2p capability to a Flash video chat application is to use the Adobe Stratus service which is in beta.

According to the Stratus Terms of Service you are not allowed to host an application using Stratus, the service might be terminated at any time, your use of the Stratus service can be revoked, etc… .

What does this mean?

It means that right now the Stratus service is offered to test p2p capabilities in Flash Player, not for use in commercial/production apps.

But isn’t chatroulette using Stratus/p2p?

Yes it is and it was a great way for Adobe to test their Stratus servers and technology.

When will we be able to use/buy apps using p2p in a commercial/real-life/production environment?

When the next version o FMIS comes out, according to Adobe the next version of FMIS will include the Stratus service!

Will Red5 or Wowza support p2p?

Most probably yes, but it will take some time after the official inclusion in FMIS, maybe 3 months  to 1 year? Check out the blue 5 project for a future open source alternative to Stratus.

Will AVChat 3 and AVConference support p2p?

Certainly! When Stratus will be available in the next version of FMIS we will nail out the details. We can run everything trough p2p (text, audio & video) or just the audio and video.

What is the main advantage of Stratus/p2p ?

The fact that the huge ammount of audio and video data does not go trough a media server thus resulting in lower latncy video and huge reductions in bandwidth usage on the media server!

What is the main concern now with p2p in Flash Player?

The fact that data trough p2p goes trough UDP which is blocked by the more restrictive corporate firewalls! Computers behind a NAT might also have issues! People who could connect to a media server (FMIS,Red5,Wowza) might not be able to use p2p in its current from in Flash Player. Hopefully Adobe will provide solutions to these issues or easy fallbacks to non p2p cmmunication via FMIS!

Have we done any work with p2p/Stratus so far?

Yes, we’ve built a dummy instant messenger which you can test on http://avchat.im .

Adobe released last week FMS 3.5 and FMLE 3.0 which you can now download and/or purchase. There are several interesting new features which you can read about here:

• New features in Flash Media Live Encoder 3.0
• New features in FMSS 3.5 and FMIS 3.5

Prices remain unchanged with $4500 for FMIS and $995 for FMSS. Because this is not a new major version upgrade prices are rather cheap with $349 for the FMIS 3.0 to 3.5 upgrade and $249 ofr the FMSS 3.0 to 3.5 upgrade. These prices are available in the US store.

The FMLE continues to be free.

Adobe announced yesterday Flash Media Server 3.5, the next version of FMS. Just a few major changes this time:

• Apache is built in and can be used for delivering media files including jpeg, swf and video files.
• Dynamic Streaming : out of the box switching between streams of different bit rates.
• DVR : rewind on live streams.

Kevin Towes, Product Manager for Flash Media Server, has a long blog post detailing the above 3 features and some useful links you might want to check out, including this demo website with some great example of HD flash video: http://www.streamflashhd.com/

FMS 3.5 is just announced, it is not yet available for download but hopefully it will be released soon!

Flash Media Encoding Server is a server side solution for transcoding video files to formats supported by the Flash Platform  (.flv, .mp4, etc. ).

Altough I did not see this coming I think it was just a matter of time before Adobe would complete their video delivery platform with a server side transcoding solution.

According to the Adobe website FMES will be available in Fall 2008 . Unfortunately at launch it will only be available for Windows servers.

No price info has been released at this time.

More info:

• Press release on adobe.com
• FMES announcement on Adobe Developer Connection
• Datasheet pdf on adobe.com
• Product page on adobe.com