Flash Media Server 2 Features

Server Flash Media Server combines traditional streaming capabilities with a flexible development environment to create and deliver innovative, interactive media applications for the broadest group of people. This combination enables organizations to create and deliver a broad media experience, including traditional media delivery applications such as video-on-demand, live WEB event broadcasts, MP3 streaming, and rich media communications applications such as video blogs, video messages, and multimedia chat environments, allowing you to communicate with your customers in your own way.
Learn more about the powerful features of Macromedia Flash Media Server. You can page through the features, or skip to any of the features listed below.
Reach a wider range, simpler steps
Reach the widest range
Flash is the most widely used software platform in the world, covering more than 98% of all networked desktops, and is published through major partners such as Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, and AOL.
"To buy is to use"
Flash delivers a consistent media experience across operating systems and browsers, enabling your developers to work on the most powerful new experiences, rather than being busy creating cross-platform fixes.
Lower cost
You can deploy your code to multiple platforms without having to write it in a different format, or to develop multiple versions of your site. Just write and develop your code once, and you can deliver it in any location via Flash Media Server.
Best Media experience
Seamless integration
Seamlessly integrate the media experience directly into your Web site without popping up other windows or browsers to get a neat, cohesive look.
Customizing the viewer
Control the appearance of the media Player to conform to the site design specifications and enhance your brand awareness. Build custom players with unique features to make your experience unique and to retain and attract audiences.
High quality video
Supports new, high-quality video codecs that enable customers to deliver superior video quality comparable to today's best video codec at a lower bit rate and file size.
Instant "Start"
Small lightweight file formats, protocols and players, and programmable buffer controls on the server enable FMS streaming media to start immediately after the playback button is selected.
The delivery of peace and rest
Bandwidth detection
Detects the connection speed of the client and provides the appropriate bit rate video. Confusing messages like "Choose Video Size" will no longer be sent to end users.
Custom Stream Delivery
Flash Media Server automatically captures the end user's connection status and enables publishers to deliver video streams to end users based on this information.
For example, for publishers who want to take advantage of the new high quality video codec in Flash 8 and want to support users who connect in Flash 7 or later, you can use this feature to provide Flash 8 video to everyone who is connected to flash Player 8 while the normal Fla The SH video is available to everyone connected to Flash Player 6 or 7.
Dynamic buffering
Set the buffer programmatically to set the fastest start time based on the length and bit rate of the video and the speed of the client connection. Provides the fastest possible start-up and delivers the optimal delivery of video with a higher rate of connection than the client.
Quality of service Monitoring
Track the playback experience of the client and correct the unpredictable playback problems that occur due to network congestion.
Firewalls and agents traversing
Quickly test multiple ports and protocol combinations to bypass firewalls and agents and select the fastest connections.
Advanced Media Features
Playlist and AD Insert support
Use standard XML formats, such as SMIL or ASX, to deliver a client or server-side playlist, and make your content profitable by rolling in the input stream and interrupting ads.
Live video streaming and recording
You can capture real-time audio and video streams from cameras and microphone sources that are recognized by any operating system by simply inserting the camera into a USB or firewall port. The camera API enables developers to dynamically specify video capture parameters. Captured video can be broadcast in real time to other people and/or to disk on the server.
Multi-User Communications
Create innovative video communications applications, such as rich media chat rooms, video blogs, video messages, multi-user games, and so on, using a variety of methods, multi-user streams, and remote shared object technology for synchronizing data between multiple users.
Advanced Search
Enables your viewers to immediately jump to any part of the video, regardless of the length of the video or whether it has been fully downloaded.
Multiple camera angles
Allow viewers to choose from different perspectives to provide a more engaging and interactive experience.
Security and Content Protection
No exposed URLs and media file locations
URLs that refer back to content sources often damage the location of media on the Internet. Most media players on the market allow users to easily view the location of the media clips they are playing. With Flash, the location of the external media file is compressed into binary format in the SWF file so that site visitors cannot use it, which almost makes it impossible for visitors to obtain the file and server location of the media delivered through Flash Player.
Controlling exposure to information
Traditional media players often provide a lot of information about the media, and you don't want to share so much information. For example, information such as file names, file types, encoding options, delivery methods, and so on can easily be obtained from the major media players. Flash enables you to fully customize your media Player to display information that you want customers to see only. Unless the publisher chooses to make file information available, the file information is not easy to obtain.
No client cache
The audio and video content flowing to the Flash client via Flash Media Server is not cached on the local client machine. Securely deliver MP3 files and other media, and ensure that site visitors do not have access to their temporary Internet Files folder and obtain media file resources.
Unique transport protocol limits flow jumps
By default, content delivered through Flash Media Server is included in the Macromedia Proprietary Protocol (RTMP). Because this is an unpublished proprietary format, the streaming jump program does not have the ability to jump through media delivered by Flash Media Server. This will greatly reduce the ability of unauthorized programs to capture digital media streaming from Flash media Server to Flash Player.
Access control
Flash Media Server provides a plug-in mechanism that can be used by publishers to authenticate and authenticate users before delivering the stream. With access control, publishers can prevent unauthorized sites from being deeply linked to their media streams, which can support single sign-on or pay for viewing content and events.
SSL Delivery
For the final input flow security, Flash Media Server supports the actual stream of encrypted delivery through SSL. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a protocol for secure communication over TCP/IP. Flash Media Server provides SSL and encryption for incoming and outgoing SSL connections and data. This provides the user with one of the strongest types of security protection in the case of a transport stream.
Integrated into existing infrastructure
XML Object
An XML object is a server-side API that enables developers to read and write XML files and streams. This is useful for enabling FMS to read media meta data information from media resource management systems for large-scale video-on-demand deployments. In addition, this feature can be used to connect to WEB services, such as Jabber that use XML for communication.
File objects
A file object is a server-side API that enables developers to write applications to access file system commands on the server. This is useful in many ways, for example: for smaller video-on-demand applications, developers can now query the server file system for media footage and display them in the list for reviewers to choose from.
For applications that record and store audio and video on a server, developers can now create an application that supports certain users (such as site administrators) to review submitted clips and delete or rename them as they wish.
Typically, such applications require a database and an application server. Now you can do this with only Flash Media Server.
As a result, developers can create media applications more quickly and reduce complexity.
Powerful log records
The full API for ASCII logs, real-time usage monitors, and server and flow events ensures that publishers have all the tools they need to track and generate reports about server and content usage. Because ASCII logs are consistent with the international business, you can use industry-standard tools to parse logs, document audio and video usage, and create powerful reports. In addition, you can use logging to provide the following features:
Configurable log directory
Log rotation
Configurable log file size
Configurable log Content
Content publishers benefit from the ability to generate reports for making content profitable and for determining the validity and reach scope of the message.
Stream Event Capture
With detailed information about immediately accessible flow events, developers can know exactly how, when and who to access streaming video.
Traditional media delivery features, such as incremental downloads, only tell you whether to "tap" or download a media file. Publishers cannot know how many videos the user has watched, for example, if the user clicks on a pause on the video instead of continuing to play it, or if the user leaves the page to browse elsewhere before viewing the entire clip.
Using streaming event logging in Flash Media Server enables publishers to see and capture the exact amount of video that end users watch.
Management Console
The management console makes it easy to run and manage Flash Media Server deployments and applications. With an intuitive, web-based interface, administrators can view real-time information about applications, objects, streams, and functions that are functioning correctly, such as CPU performance and bandwidth from a single UI.
scalability, reliability, and performance
Edge Server
For larger deployments, there is now a new edge-source deployment option to simplify load balancing, failover, redundancy, and clustering.
In the past, delivering large media applications that needed to run on multiple servers was often complex and required a lot of integration and/or manual work. As the following illustration shows, content, configuration files, and application logic must be replicated to all servers. You need to create a special server script for the synchronization server. Monitoring the server or getting log information can be done once, but you will need to customize your work if you want to monitor and view reports from all servers at the same time.
With Flash Media server, customers can deploy multiple edge servers to handle actual traffic while preserving all content, server scripting application logic, and reporting on a central source server. The Edge server connects to the source server and pushes and drags content and applications as needed. As shown in the following figure.
In this scenario, traffic can be sent to the edge server through any common load-balancing software or hardware. This approach simplifies load balancing, failover, redundancy, and clustering for large-scale deployments.
Listed below are many of the smart features in the source and edge servers that enable them to adjust the delivery of media applications.
On-demand streaming cache for edge servers
The Edge server caches the content at the edge of the network when the user requests audio and video content. This content can be cached in RAM, and can be cached on local storage if needed. Caching footage to the edge reduces the need for server access to storage, which is usually a bottleneck in mass media delivery, and enables video to reach end users faster.
Live Streaming Segmentation
In addition to facilitating on-demand files, the live streaming segmentation feature enables edge servers to automatically schedule live streams from one source server (or another edge server for a very large deployment) and to publish these streams to end users as needed. This feature enables automatic access to live video throughout the cluster.
Data flow and shared object processing
In addition to delivering audio and video, Flash Media Server can provide data in a one-time (streaming) or persistent (shared object) method. Large-scale data type conversion applications are an excellent example of this feature. Edge servers also deliver data in the same way that they deliver audio and video data.
Routing Management
This feature enables you to control which edge servers handle which connections and how to route data in the cluster.
Multi-process
Flash Media Server enables you to run each virtual host, application, or instance as a stand-alone process. This is useful for several reasons: Flash media Server is used to support many unique media applications. To achieve maximum reliability, these applications can be run as a separate process. If you need to stop an application for maintenance or upgrades, it will not affect other applications. Companies with many brands or sites powered by a FMS server or cluster also have the same advantages. You can maintain each site without affecting other sites.
In addition, some operating systems limit each process to 2GB of RAM. By making different instances use different processes, you can limit each process in the operating system to approximately 2GB.
Note: This feature is only available for source server deployment.