FSW: There are still some industry features Flashcom doesn't support, for instance Digital Right Management (DRM), Multicasting or Load-Balancing outside the VitalStream and Speedera network. What is the direction for Flash video and will Macromedia address these things in the future?

Chris Hock: Because Flash and Flash Communication Server provide full development environments, many of the specific tasks that users need to achieve when they speak of DRM, multicasting, or load-balancing are readily achievable within the Flash environment. Here are a couple of quick examples:

Crowe Chizek and Company deployed a company-wide Webcast via distributed Flash Communication Server servers that split streams and distributed them out to local offices to achieve many of the same bandwidth bottleneck savings features found in a multicast. You can read about that here:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/showcase/index.cfm?event=casestudydetail&casestudyid=30117&loc=en_us

Audio and video streams served up with Flash Communication Server are not cached to the client hard disk and are not accessible in the application UI via a right mouse click. Furthermore, because the Flash Player supports SSL and RTMPS, the streams themselves can be encrypted for the ultimate stream protection. Features such as this enable companies such as CBC and Virgin Music Canada to use Flash Communication Server for delivering MP3 content confident that it will keep users honest.

Many customers using Flash Communication Server to deliver video on demand from multiple servers use a simple round robin approach to spread the load to various servers.

That said, we'll continue to look at what customers need in order to effectively create and deliver their media and look to add functionality where appropriate.


FSW: Live broadcasts with Flash video. What was the biggest event so far? Are there plans for a hardware encoder with improved video quality?

Chris Hock: I can't say that I know all of the live events that are occurring with Flash Communication Server and hesitate to speculate on the largest. However, we participated in a live broadcast event with VitalStream and Red Bull Energy Drink over the summer which featured satellite uplinks of video feeds, three live cameras for the viewer to choose from, and cameras mounted in zany places such as on the skydivers' helmets. That event attracted over 8,000 viewers. You can read about it here:
http://www.macromedia.com/newsletters/edge/august2004/

Regarding hardware encoding solutions - to be clear, there are hardware encoding vendors which can encode to FLV format today. Digital Rapids provides a solution that uses Sorenson's ACE engine.

The piece that's missing, however, is that none of the encoding vendors currently offer the ability to encode and stream live Flash video feeds. It should be noted that you can capture, encode and stream live video feeds with the Flash Player 6 or higher and a Flash Communication Server application today. This is a great solution for quickly and easily sharing webcams or DV cameras for video communications applications. However, for live video applications that require higher quality live streams, the best solution will need to occur outside of Macromedia Flash Player in a hardware- and/or software-based tool specifically designed to encode and stream video.

I think this is a very important piece of the Flash video ecosystem that's missing. We're currently talking to some of the leading encoding vendors and with a little luck (and some nudging from your readers - read: contact your encoding vendor of choice and demand live Flash video streaming support) one of them will come out with a solution soon.