David, I have few questions about FMES. For the last 8 years we gathered thousands of educational video files. They are encoded using DivX 4,5,6 / MP3 (.avi). So, the questions are: - will there be any problems with DivX? Format Support guide says it is supported, but I can't, for example, reencode DivX media using Flash Media Encoder to .flv on my mac. - do you need to install additional software to set up "encoding farm"? - can you post, please, few screenshots of FMES interface to see "what it is made of" :)?

David, thank you for your speedy reply. About UG meeting - I am 99% sure that it is going to be "extremely far from me"! I am really considering to get FMES in 1-2 months, as I have no idea how to prepare our "millions" of files for broadcasting via FMS. And one more small question: is it possible to automate encoded media to a server (using ftp for example)? Thank you Sean's mail. I am sure he will help me. PS: I have some question regarding Flash Media Rights Management Server? Where is the best place to ask them?

Hello, there! We've had our FlashCom service terminated by MediaTemple and must now install FMS on our dedicated virtual server ourselves. I'm rather afraid that this is beyond my comfort zone and am looking for some direction, guidance, and even hand-holding. Any and all help that you can give on this is wildly appreciated. Patrick

I'm getting started and I want to write a "Hello Persistance" application.  I'm trying to send a string to FMS, and save it as a file.  Then, I'm going to have a method on the server that will retrieve that file and send it back over to the client when requested.

Trouble is that when I do my file.write() method, I get an error "File operation write failed".  It opened the file just fine, and it created the file just fine.  I wish that error were more helpful, and I wish that a google search for the quoted phrase "file operation write failed" didn't return 0 results.  Unfortunately, I could not find a single example on the Internet about how to create an end-to-end solution with the FMS File class.  So now I'm stuck!

If anybody can just point me at a page that shows a real example of using the File class, I'd appreciate it.

Here's the server code:

    // Write to project file data:
    client.writeProjectFile = function( inName, inData )
    {
        // todo: read project from a file
        trace("writing project data: " + inData)

        var myFile = new File( "database/" + inName )
        myFile.open("text", "write")
        myFile.write("hello")
        myFile.close()
        return "ok"
    }

I just tried to get started with Flash Media Live Encoder, and when I try to publish to FMS, it prompts me for a username and password, and it rejects it every time.  It just says "Failure to connect to primary server.  Please verify that your Server URL, application name is valid and your internet connection is working and retry."  I have done 100% of the things suggested by that message, and it still doesn't work.  Where can I find documentation about setting up FMS applications to work with live streams inserted by FMLE?

Every information resource I can find just assumes that FMS will automatically accept the connection.  So again I'm totally stuck.

Another thing that's confusing is that both justin.tv and ustream.tv have FMLE xml files that I'm supposed to import as an FMLE provile.  I thought I might look at how they do it, but in both cases, when I try to load the xml file, it says "The file selected is not a valid Flash Media Live Encoder profile."

So far, my experience is that FMS is extremely difficult to get started with.  I long to get into the secret underground club of people who have figured it out.  :-)

I have attached the swf file and the page that I am using.  I will definitely recommend the upgrade to 3.5 when it is available.  My attempt in the enclosed files is to use parameters sent in from the web page.

The HTML from the web page is as follows:

<!-- using Query String -->
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
        codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0"
        width="1000"
        height="1000"
        align="middle"
        id="main">
    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
    <param name="movie" value="vodtest.swf?param1=Episode01-700d.flv" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />
    <embed src="vodtest.swf?param1=Episode01-700d.flv"
           width="1000"
           height="1000"
           autostart="false"
           quality="high"
           bgcolor="#ffffff"
           name="vodtest"
           align="middle"
           allowScriptAccess="sameDomain"
           type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
           pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>

Thank you.

@hgarland - unfortunatly that is the name of the game with FMS sometimes. A great resouce is flashcomguru.com though, and will try to post more to our link/resources in the coming weeks and months

Thanks David,

Here are the snippets you requested from the .as file:

//Code that should be pulling the parameters passed in from my prior web page html post

try
{
 var keyStr:String;
 var valueStr:String;
 var paramObj:Object = LoaderInfo(this.root.loaderInfo).parameters;
 for (keyStr in paramObj)
 {
  valueStr = String(paramObj[keyStr]);
  param1.text = valueStr;
  //valueStr = "Episode01-700d.flv"
  //do something with this information
 }
}
catch (error:Error)
{
 param1.appendText(error.toString());
}

//Code that plays the flv

onConnect = function(){
  // remove all messages box content
  msg_box_2.text = " ";
  msg_box_2._height = 10;
  
  if(counter == 0){
   attachMovie("FLVPlayback", "my_FLVPlybk", 10, {width:640, height:460, x:10, y:142});
   my_FLVPlybk.playPauseButton = playpausebtn;
   my_FLVPlybk.seekBar = seekbar;
   my_FLVPlybk.muteButton = mutebtn;
    }
    else{
   if(my_FLVPlybk.activeVideoPlayerIndex != 0){
    trace ("closing the video player");
    my_FLVPlybk.closeVideoPlayer(my_FLVPlybk.activeVideoPlayerIndex);   
   }
  }
  counter++;
  my_FLVPlybk.activeVideoPlayerIndex = counter;
  my_FLVPlybk.visibleVideoPlayerIndex = counter;
  my_FLVPlybk.maintainAspectRatio = true;
  my_FLVPlybk.autoSize = true;
  resize_on_start_play = false;
  play_head_text.text = "";
  size_text.text = "";
  
  //center the FLVPlayback component when FLV is ready to play
  listenerObject.resize = function(eventObject:Object):Void {
   if(my_FLVPlybk.preferredWidth == 0 && my_FLVPlybk.preferredHeight == 0){
    resize_on_start_play = true;
    return;
   }
   // resize or reposition FLVPlayback component
   startx = 10;
   starty = 142;
   widthMax = 640;
   heightMax = 450;
   if(my_FLVPlybk.width > widthMax || my_FLVPlybk.height > heightMax){
    my_FLVPlybk.autoSize = false;
    my_FLVPlybk.setSize(widthMax,heightMax);
   }
   else
   {
    my_FLVPlybk._x = startx + (widthMax - my_FLVPlybk.width)/2;
    my_FLVPlybk._y = starty + (heightMax - my_FLVPlybk.height)/2;
    
   }
   
   var size = (my_FLVPlybk.width/my_FLVPlybk.preferredWidth)*(my_FLVPlybk.height/my_FLVPlybk.preferredHeight)*100;
   size_text.text = "size: "+Math.floor(size)+"%";
  };
    
  listenerObject.playheadUpdate = function(eventObject:Object):Void {
   onStateChange();
  };
  my_FLVPlybk.addEventListener("resize", listenerObject);   
  my_FLVPlybk.addEventListener("stateChange", onStateChange);
  my_FLVPlybk.addEventListener("playheadUpdate", listenerObject);
 
  my_FLVPlybk.contentPath = param1.text; //valueStr; //"Episode01-700d.flv"
  my_FLVPlybk.autoPlay = true;
  trace(my_FLVPlybk.contentPath);
}

If you need anything more, please let me know.  Thank you very much.

David,

I came to the realization (I'm new at this and knew nothing about Adobe) that I am using an example from Adobe that was written in ActionScript 2.  I have been trying to pass in parameters like you would using ActionScript 3.  I read that 2 and 3 are completely different and I cannot find anything on the internet that works for passing parameters into AS2.  I think that my only way to come to a solution is to start from scratch and create a movie player written in AS3 as I should then be able to pass parameters.  If you have a better idea, please let me know.  Thanks.

Hi David!

I've never used any flash server before and I'm about to undertake a video recording task so it looks like my best (lowest cost) option for recording video from a user's webcam is going to be Flash Media Interactive Server.  Is that right?

If so, what I'm wondering is, can I overlay graphics on top of the webcam stream, and then record both the overlaid graphics and the webcam at the same time to create an FLV that has the graphics overlaid on top of the webcam footage?   Please let me know as soon as you can if this is even possible.

Thanks!

You can not record with overlaid graphics with FMS unless there is a client side software that incorporates this. This is not a feature of FMS but would be a feature of the client side application. FMS just takes the bits and puts them to disk.

Okay, I have a project now that simply needs to record audio from the user's mic onto the server, and store that file in a known place with a controllable filename that I can store into a database to access later.  That is all I am needing from FMS.  Can this be accomplished with Flash Media Streaming Server?  Or do I need to get Interactive server?  For a little more detail here is a very brief outline of the application:

1.  The user will click "start recording" and flash will stream the input of their mic to FMS.

2.  The user will click "stop" and the recording should stop, and FMS should store the streamed audio to the server using a filename generated by the flash application.  The application will use AMF and PHP to store the filename to a database.  The application will also generate a url that will link to the application and load the user's audio file into the player.

3.  The user will be able to go to the generated URL to hear their recorded audio.

Please let me know if I can accomplish the FMS aspect of this application with Streaming Server, of if I need to get the Interactive Server.

Thanks for any help!

Answers to some questions from similiar post:

1. What bitrate (audio+video) are your files encoded at?

• FLV output file from original wmv: using On2 VP6, 638x480, framerate 29.97, stereo audio 128kbps, video bitrate encoding VBR, encoding pass one, 1,500kbps, undershoot 90, quality: good.

2. When you experience this choppy playback, how many clients are consuming video from the server at that time?

• 1 or 2; we're only testing now and there is almost no load

3. What is the bufferTime set to in your client side code?

• I'm not sure what this is set to; I know we haven't adjusted it.  Where would I find this code?

4. Is the server in a datcenter, or is it running on a residential or commercial ISP line?

• server is in the Seattle Softlayer datacenter

 

Thanks so much for the help!

Keith

Thanks for the follow up Graeme,

I haven't tried to encode to CBR; I'll give that a shot.  The original video is talking head with some integrated PPT images.  It is about 112MB and the encoded FLV is 102MB - not that it matters!

Wondering if I should dive into the dynamic streaming options or just drop the quality and encode at CBR with lower bitrate.

Keith

the newly encoded versions at CBR and 750 bit rate seem to be working great!  Thanks so much for your help!

Not sure if this is the place to post this but are any of you working with Dynamic Streaming as well?  Is it worth my time to move to that format and will it improve my end users experience?

thanks again and have a great weekend.

Keith

I want to make Flash Media Server to communicate with my web server.But I dont know how much bandwidth exactly I need to allocate for running FMS server.I'll use this FMS server only for my one website so that my user can video chat to each other.Frankly speaking,I didn't work with FMS server before.Bandwidth is very limited in our country so it's a great matter for me.

Please somebody help me and give me proper information.  

Anyone interested in a disscussion about the FMS Gateway on Coldfusion?  I plan to start my studies over the next two weeks....anyone game to play?