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FMS Online User Group: Next Generation of Content Protection Flash Access

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:17:00 -0000

Very brief post: if you are interested in funding out more about the upcoming DRM features for Flash delivered through a new server called Flash Access then you should attend the next meeting of the FMS Online User Group. It takes place on December 3, 2009 and the time depends on where you are in the world :-)
Check the events page for upcoming details.

Flash Midlands User Group This Saturday (Nov 7th) in Coventry

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0000

Just a quick heads up for those of you who are a) based in the UK somewhere around the Midlands (then again it's only an hour from Londontown) and b) are interested in hearing me talk about life as a Flash freelancer.
I'll be giving a small presentation with potentially a lot of Q&A which will cover why you would want to start working for yourself, when is a good time to do it, how you go about it, how to find work and a lot of other pros and cons of being your own boss which may help you in your decision making. The session should also be interesting for those who are already self employed. In all it will be a summary of tips and tricks I have learned (often the hard way) over many years.

The meetup is on Saturday, November 7th from 11am at Warwick University. Hope to see you there.

Installing ColdFusion 9 on OSX Snow Leopard with MAMP

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:35:00 -0000

I've had a few issues getting ColdFusion 9 to run under OSX when trying to leverage an existing MAMP install (note: I was not using MAMP Pro. If you are using MAMP Pro then Mike has got some advice for you).

I have not got enough time right now to run the whole install process again and take screenshots along the way but I'll do my best to summarise what I think may help some others who want to use MAMP and CF9 together. I took some hints from this excellent post by Paul Pounder, however my install differed in that I chose a single server installation. Saying that, I think I encountered similar permission issues as the ones that Paul describes. [More]

Creating New Flex Locales in OSX

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:58:00 -0000

When adding localisation support for my Flex applications I often find myself having to create new locales. This process is not very easy and involves some Terminal/Commandline interactions. I'm posting the necessary details here for anyone who needs them, as well as for myself as I constantly have to look this up.
The problem is that the Flex 3 compiler is pickier than the Flex 2 compiler used to be so any specific locales you would like to support need to be present somewhere in the bowles of your Flex SDK directory. In order to produce the missing files and folders one must compile the existing en_US locale for the new locale (say de_DE) one wants to support. On OSX you need to do the following, in Terminal:


// navigate to the specific SDK you are compiling for (such as 3.0.0 in this example)
cd '/Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.0.0'

// use the copylocale tool to compile/copy/godknowhatitsdoing

sudo bin/copylocale en_US de_DE

Last step: in your Flex project properties under Flex Compiler > Compiler Options add the new locale so it gets compiled:


-locale=en_US,de_DE -source-path=../locale/{locale}

Here's what it should look like:

Straight forward isn't it? No, not really. It drives me up the wall actually. Now please go and file an enhancement request will you?
By the way, the best (and pretty much only comprehensive) page which explains the localisation features in Flex is on Adobe Labs of all places. Well worth a read.

Fabio's MAX Talk on Encoding Best Practices Now Online

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:43:00 -0000

The title really says it all: Fabio's session titled Encoding Best Practices For H.264 Video Using Flash is - amongst many others - now available on Adobe TV.

I've not had a chance to watch it yet but feel free to leave comments below if you have. I'll definitely put it on my ever-growing MAX catchup list.

Making Sense of Stratus, LCCS and FMS

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:44:00 -0000

There has been a bit of confusion around which one of Adobe's collaborative platforms offers or will offer certain features. In particular many people have asked if a developer always needs to rely on a hosted service such as Stratus or Lifecycle Collaboration Service (aka AFCS aka Cocomo) when wanting to use the new RTMFP protocol which will deliver (partly is delivering already) new and exciting features to the Flash Player.

To clear thing up, Kevin Towes, FMS Product Manager at Adobe, just posted the following information to the FlashMedia List:

STRATUS - this will always be ahead of the curve, providing a way to help us roll out new features that are in Flash player, before we can have a server offering. The service is and will remain as a free non-commercial service from Adobe. This service is not FMS, and has no ability for Server side scripting, or customization.

AFCS/LIVECYCLE COLLABORATION SERVICE - this will be a commercial option for customers interested in building a business that includes RTMFP. We introduced a pricing model, and it has support for the features found inside Stratus 1.0 (supporting Flash player 10.0). Key advantage with this service is the framework, which is an option for developers to get started, and leverage RTMFP to RTMP failover technology. You still will not have access to server side scripting, but there are lots of APIs in the framework to get you going. The goal for this service is to provide developers an option to bring this technology into your solution.

FLASH MEDIA SERVER - we have not announced any new version of FMS yet that will support RTMFP. We did hint yesterday that we'll be updating FMS3.5 to version 3.5.3 later this year to support the new FP 10.1 features - and in a future version after that release - FMS may be one of your options to host a local service to build your own P2P applications - including introductions, and supporting server side programming.

Thanks Kevin, I think this clears things up somewhat.

My First iPhone Game - Built with Flash!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:11:00 -0000

The time has finally come to lift the lid on this. As you've probably all heard by now, Adobe today announced a brand new feature for the upcoming Flash Professional CS5: Export as iPhone app. Insane! Essentially what this feature will allow you to do is a cross-compilation from SWF to Objective-C - the resulting app is a totally legit iPhone/iPod Touch app which can be submitted to the Apple app Store. In my case that process has already happened, and the app has been approved!

I will post more details about the development process when things have calmed down a little, but for now I'm super exited to announce the immediate availability of my first application for iPhone and iPod Touch: my good old Just Letters game.
I figured this Flash game of mine which stems back from around 2005 would make an ideal candidate for a touch screen device, and I think I haven't been completely wrong with that assumption. Not only is Just Letters one of the first games built in Flash to ever hit the App Store but I have a feeling it is the very first game that use Flash Media Server to provide the real-time features.

In celebration of the launch I am distributing 10 free voucher codes for the US App Store (sorry, the vouchers do not work on App Stores outside the US). The game normally retails for $0.99. Just leave a comment below and I will pick a random 10 later today (leave your email too!).

Please help me spread the word about this game by blogging about it, tweeting or getting your grandma to buy a copy. Don't forget to review and rate it on the App Store too. please point people to the following age when you link to the game: http://www.muchosmedia.com/justletters (muchosmedia is my company, the 'official' developer behind the game).
Last but not least, if you need the game's icon or some screenshots then you can grab a small zip (1MB) from here. It also contains the game description in text format.

Thanks for your support!

Pre-MAX News: Flash Player 10.1 Is A New Milestone

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:14:00 -0000

In what appears to be an on-purpose release of MAX related announcements ahead of the event which starts today in LA, Adobe have announced the latest version of Flash Player: version 10.1. Do not let yourself be fooled by the .1 release as this version is much more than just another point release, it is a huge upgrade to Flash and the entire platform, touching many parts and in particular mobile and media delivery. Justin Everett-Church has a great breakdown of all the new features.

Overview
I'm not quite sure where to start, but I'll have a try:
Flash Player 10.1 can be labeled as a 'real' fully featured Flash Player for mobile. It contains a lot of optimisations as well as new APIs that are directly aimed at breaking open the mobile device market for Flash - I think it's safe to say that the time for Flash on mobile has finally come. [More]

Watch the MAX Keynotes Online!

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:04:00 -0000

Brilliant - those of us who cannot make it to MAX this year will have the chance to watch the keynotes live online - just register at max.adobe.com/online/.

MAX will be great this year and I highly recommend you catch the keynotes. I have a feeling there may be some cool announcements coming up...

Fabio Sonnati at MAX 2009: H.264 Encoding and Delivery Best Practices

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:10:00 -0000

If you are even remotely interested in or have to work with encoding video content for the web then you do not want to miss Fabio Sonnati's session at MAX. If his talk at last year's MAX Milan is anything to go by then this will be a very technical and highly interesting session.

To wet your appetite a bit, Fabio has prepared a video comparison demo which shows just what can be done with the right encoding parameters and some clever pre-processing. In his demo, Fabio has taken a music video from YouTube (original bitrate ~2MBit/sec) and re-encoded it at a mere 500 Kbit/sec. If you expect the re-encoded, low bitrate content to be of lower quality then think again.

And to find you how this was achieved and what technical tricks made me watch and listen to an entire Bjork video without complaints then you just need to get yourself down to LA for Adobe MAX 2009, and more specifically to Room 506 on 5th October at 2:00 pm. If nothing else you can enjoy Fabio's trademark Italian accent - but trust me when I say that Fabio's talk will not be the only item on the agenda to look forward to.

How Does Flash Access 2.0 Relate to FMS?

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:42:00 -0000

Jens Loeffler has published a nice little overview on his blog about the differences and similarities between Flash Media Server and Flash Access 2.0 a far as content and DRM mechanisms are concerned.

You can find Jens's article here.

DRM Capabilities To Be Added To Flash Player

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:23:00 -0000

Adobe will soon be adding DRM capabilities directly to the Flash Player, a feature that was previously only available through Adobe AIR, Adobe's cross-platform desktop runtime. The new feature was announced at IBC in Amsterdam today.

This is a fairly significant addition to the Flash Platform. While I'm not a fan of DRM, I understand that some content owners are very keen to add (what they perceive as) protection to their assets, and Flash will soon be capable to tick that box. The technology works in a similar fashion to the way in which the Adobe Media Player used to handle content protection: a DRM server called Flash Access 2.0 - which was also announced at IBC and which is basically a renamed release of Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server (I'm glad that I won't have to type that name again!) - will handle the signing and protection aspects, while Flash Player can soon deal with the decryption and content access mechanisms natively. As mentioned above, this was previously only an option if Adobe AIR was used to build the client. I guess these new features and the demise of Adobe Media Player shows that end users prefer to consume content right inside the browser, and are less keen to install and use yet another video player onto their desktop. Those who prefer to use AIR to deliver their content can still do so as the runtime will also support the content protection features which Flash Access 2.0 promises. Here's the full press release.

Adobe Flash Access 2.0 is planned for commercial availability in the first half of 2010.

Adobe TV Launches New Website

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:11:00 -0000

You may have heard by now that Adobe have relaunched Adobe.TV. Adobe have listened to feedback and greatly improved the site through a better navigation system, more robust search and more interactive capabilities. Incidentally the video player used on Adobe.TV is one of the first public video players which utilises the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF).

The site now offers new additions such as a resizable pop-out window that allows users to view content while simultaneously working within their Adobe applications. A new homepage provides quick and easy access to relevant episodes, with the ability to sort by most popular, most viewed, highest rated and recently added. And users can download the Adobe Media Player to view and save content offline, and receive new programming as soon as it is released.

I've used the site to watch a few episodes by the Flex Team and I must admit that the new site is a definitive improvement. While there are some minor glitches still to be ironed out I think this is a destination to keep an eye on. And the quality of the content is superb - which is of course the most important part.

Flash Media Server User Group: FMIS and Large Scale Deployments

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:48:00 -0000

It's time for another Flash Media Server User Group Meeting, this time covering Adobe's Flash Media Interactive Server and Large Scale Deployments.

When: September 10th at 12pm EST and 10am MST (I think that makes it 5pm here in the UK).

Who: Presenter is going to be Nick Hippe who currently works at Adobe within their mobile and device division.

Where: Call in details will me available here at this link on the day of the event http://groups.adobe.com/posts/81ef708026

If you have a large scale deployment of Adobe's Flash Media Interactive Server when should you move to set up a clustered deployment? When should an origin/edge configuration be deployed?
Nick Hippe will discuss the basics behind implementing Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server in a large scale deployment. He will cover the fundamentals of an origin/edge configurations as well as recommendations for matching configurations to solutions. If you are want to learn more about the capabilities of FMIS in large scale deployments, this is the FMSUG meeting for you.

6th Adobe Poker Coder Event, 3rd September 2009

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:26:00 -0000

The 6th Adobe sponsored PokerCoder London Poker Tournament (ALPT VI) for Adobe web professionals is happening on the evening of Thursday 3rd September, 7pm at the Loose Cannon Poker Club near Cannon Street tube on the Circle and District lines.

There are a few places left but they'll go fast. The event is totally FREE to qualifying individuals, with Adobe laying out for the venue, the prizes and the bar tab. It's an excellent opportunity to network, socialise, tell Adobe what you think about their software (gets interesting after a few beers I can tell you) and generally test yourself and your friends out under pressure. Don't be put off if you've never played Poker before, well over half the attendees are always novices and they're usually the ones who end up winning.

The rules are simple, the dealers are on hand to give advise and there's a 15 minute lesson at the beginning for everyone. This is a strictly fun game only and you won't be playing with or for money, though we do lay on cash game tables later in the evening if you're feeling brave. It's great fun and really is the thinking man's card game. There's even a ticket for Flash on the Beach up for grabs thanks to John at Flash on the Beach. So get along to www.pokercoder.com and register before the last places go.