TheRealTimeWeb.com: Flash Media Server 4 Released

Flash Media Server 4 Released - Here's The Lowdown

Posted by Stefan Richter in FMS | 14 Comments

Today Adobe announced and released Flash Media Server 4 which they are currently showcasing at IBC in Amsterdam.

New Enterprise Edition
The first thing to note is a new edition of FMS, the Enterprise edition - let's call it FMES. It joins the familiar Developer edition (free), Flash Media Streaming Server (FMSS) and the Flash Media Interactive Server (FMIS). The price points for FMSS and FMIS remain unchanged at $995 and $4500 respectively whilst FMES's price is available upon request - so it's likely to be pretty pricey.

So how does Adobe justify a newe, higher priced version of FMS? The premise is that whoever deploys FMES (usually large organisations and CDNs) will be able to recoup the cost of FMS licenses multiple times over through massive bandwidth savings. 'How so' I hear you ask. The answer is called 'multicast fusion', otherwise known as IP multicast paired with Adobe's application level multicast which in turn is what we refer to as Flash P2P over RTMFP. Admittedly multicast fusion sounds a lot better :-)

New Features

So what else is new? Depending on the edition you purchase you get access to a several new features, starting with HTTP streaming, incklujding dynamic bitrate streaming over HTTP as well as live delivery over HTTP. These features are available in FMIS and FMES, but not in FMSS.

Next up is fast stream switching. This feature is similar to the automatic bitrate switching that we already know, but this time it's, well, faster. Where previously Flash Player would wait for the next appropriate keyframe at whic to switch from one bitrate to another it can now do so almost immediately, resulting in a more responsive behaviour when bandwidth fluctuations are encountered. The result: a better user experience. This is one of those features that most end users won't even notice, which is exactly what you want. The stream will adapt on the fly.

In summary, FMS 4 is a release that's again squarely targeted at optimising video delivery by providing more means to deliver content using HTTP in addition to the familar RTMP based methods. On top of that, higher end users purchasing FMIS now have a multicast option, whilst top end users of FMES can combine IP multicast with RTMFP based application level multicast.

So where does this leave developers interested in building real-time enabled collaborative applications (and I count myself in that category)? Unfortunately there hasn't been any movement in terms of features, tooling or workflow. FMS is still using ActionScript 1 syntax for server side scripting, the admin console remains unchanged (and inadequate for debugging) and there's no sign of any IDE or Eclipse plugin to aid FMS developers.
Moreover, what happened to the much promoted Peer to Peer features? Have you noticed that only FMES supports RTMFP, presumably using a rendezvous service similar to Stratus. Stratus of course is only available for non-commercial use, and whilst the Developer edition offers limited support to try RTMFP there really is no upgrade path if you want to scale your service. I'm disappointed in this.
I can see third party providers such as Influxis or Uvault offering hosted FMES options, but I know several companies who simply want to host everything themselves, either on their own infrastructure or even within their own internal network. Are they meant to upgrade to FMES? Not a chance, since they do not have any significant bandwidth savings to fulfill but instead may just want access to the low latency benefits of the UDP based RTMFP.

Some conspiracy theorists may even suggest that Adobe has purposely left RTFMP out of FMIS to drive the adoption of its LiveCycle Collaboration Service which includes RTMFP capabilities and has done so for a while. However the real reason is probably the need to monetise multicast fusion heavily, and the best way to do that is to aim it square at the Enterprise and CDN market. The fact that this seems to leave small companies and service providers without an easy route to leverage Flash P2P commercially is very unfortunate.

If you want to find out more or even see Flash Media Server 4 first hand then tune in later today for streaming video live from IBC at 5:30pm UK time.

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Posted on September 9, 2010 at 4:27 PM. 4210 views. 14 comments. Print

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#1 by Ramses Moreno on 9/9/10 - 3:35 PM

Any chance version 4 will support Screen Sharing? :)
#2 by ATif on 9/9/10 - 6:16 PM

Screen sharing is available in LCCS
#3 by Ramses Moreno on 9/9/10 - 6:47 PM

Yes but would be nice if it's avaliable also in any instalation of FMS right?
#4 by Stefan Richter on 9/9/10 - 10:19 PM

yep that would be nice, and no, I can't see it happening anytime soon...
#5 by Jan Pies on 9/9/10 - 11:04 PM

Finally there is a true 64bit version of FMIS for Windows, I think that is a pretty important update for those running FMIS on Windows Server. Sure, the benefits of 64bit are often overrated, but since newer versions of Windows Server are only available in 64bit (which makes a lot of sense actually) it was indeed time for Adobe to add a true 64bit version.
#6 by Edward Chan on 9/14/10 - 5:33 AM

Screen Sharing is enabled in FMS4.
#7 by Stefan Richter on 9/14/10 - 8:37 AM

Edward, not quite sure what you mean by that. How is screensharing enabled in FMS4? If you mean that FMS4 no longer blocks the screen share codec when used via third party tools then you are correct, but that's still not what most people are looking for which is a Flash based screen sharing encoder such as the Connect client.
#8 by Dario De Agostini on 9/14/10 - 10:24 AM

Screen sharing is a "client matter", we should focus on asking it to flash player team, not fms team :(

FMS (finally) do not block streams which include screensharing codec, that's a great thing (well, it was horrible it was blocked before, to be honest).

I think fms4 is the best release Adobe did so far, speaking about fcs/fms.

I agree with you Stefan, for those (like us) who work on collaborative applications, this release has nothing. P2p is also not so important if compared to a good quality video encoder, AEC and screensharing (all are client features).
Speaking about fms, the greates feature of all is http streaming: now there will be NO PLACE in the world where a corporate user cannot see video. Up to fms 3.5 it was a big problem, any company which had a decend security policy wouldn't be able to play video served from fms (yes, i'm taking in consideration rtmpt and rtmps as well as port 80 being used instead of 1935).

Sad thing about this release is that its clear fms is moving towards a "normal" video delivery server, it's collaborative spirit (which created fcs) is going to fade...
It's sad. But i think this is realated to the fact adobe is giving us both "developer solutions" (fms) and "developed solutions" (connect)... but that's another story
#9 by Ramses Moreno on 9/14/10 - 1:00 PM

"FMS4 no longer blocks the screen share codec when used via third party tools " Which third party tools exists?
#10 by Andy Gillette on 9/14/10 - 1:11 PM

I got a quote for Enterprise edition (education) and it was over $18,000.
Huge jump from the interactive edition which was only $1800 (education price).
i don't know if my boss will go for almost $16000 + just for RTMFP ability.
#11 by Edward Chan on 9/14/10 - 4:37 PM

@Stefan - I figured that's what what the request was for. But as Dario said, that's a Flash Player request. FMS no longer blocks screen sharing.
#12 by Ramses Moreno on 9/14/10 - 5:21 PM

If FMS does not block screen sharing, and as Flash Player can use screen sharing (with LCCS), what is in the middle of Flash Player and FMS that is blocking Screen sharing?
#13 by Brian Lesser on 9/20/10 - 12:49 AM

@Ramses The regular Flash Player cannot do screen sharing. You need to use the Adobe Connect (or LCCS) add on to the player to do screen sharing. But you can only use an add on with Connect or LCCS.
#14 by Tomas on 10/20/10 - 3:12 PM

I just had to find out how much the enterprise edition costs for small businesses and $18000 as quoted above seems reasonably cheap comparatively speaking I was quoted 52360 Euros per CPU which is the equivalent to $72500, slightly out of my price range and I would rather spend it on a new Mercedes.