AVChat Software Product Blog

Adobe has released today Flash Media Server 3.

FMS 3 is available in 3 editions:

1. Flash Media Streaming Server ($995)
2. Flash Media Interactive Server ($4500)
3. Flash Media Development Server (free, 10 simultaneous connections limit)

You can find a side by side comparison of the 3 editions here but the most important new features from my opinion are:

1. Limitations on bandwidth and connections limit have been lifted
2. More secure content delivery (rtmpe, swf hashing)
3. H.264 video and HE-AAC audio
4. Audio/Video stream delivery to Flash Lite 3
5. Major improvements in performance
6. AMF3 support and new plugin arhitecture

AVChat and AVConference should work without any issues with FMS3 as a media server should you choose to use it.

More links:
Flash Media Server 3 Product Page on the Adobe website
Flash Media Development Server download page (you need an Adobe account)
FMS3 Developer Center on the Adobe website

We’ve got a lot of emails on these topics recently so we decided to clarify the issue here.

Adobe announced support for h.264 video in Flash Player in August 2007 in this press release.

Adobe announced Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Media Encoder 2 in September 2007 in this press release.

Prerecorded h.264 video

Right now the latest Flash Player Beta Update available on Adobe Labs only supports playing/decoding of prerecorded video files encoded with h.264 and delivered using progressive download.

To deliver prerecorded h.264 video files to Flash Player applications (video players, etc…) using streaming we need to wait for Flash Media Server 3 due to be released in Spring 2008.

Flash Media Server 2 can only stream prerecorded .flv files encoded with ON2′s VP6 or with Sorenson Spark.

Live h.264 video

FME2-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

To deliver live h.264 video to Flash Player Applications (live video players, AVChat, etc…) we need to wait for Flash Media Encoder 2 and Flash Media Server 3 to be released. At that time we will be able to push live h.264 video feeds from FME2 to Flash Player Apps via FMS3.

Flash Player apps-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

If Flash Player will ever support encoding live video with h.264, then we will be able to deliver live h.264 video feeds from Flash Player applications (video chat software, etc.) to Flash Player apps (video players, etc.) using FMS3 as a streaming server!

Right now Flash Player can only encode live video using the older Sorenson Spark (h.263) video codec.