Author: Stefan Richter

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.

About the Author:
Stefan is a certified Flash Developer who has been involved with Flash Media Server since its very early days. From his home office in the UK he has handled a variety of projects, specializing in Flash Video and Rich Internet Applications for clients that include CNET, USA Network and Unilever. Stefan is the author of a series of Adobe Developer Center articles, has spoken at several industry events and contributes a regular column on Flash Video to Streaming Media Magazine. His site www.flashcomguru.com is one of the largest online resources on Flash Video. "