Which version...

[clustaSean]

Hello all, I have never used FMS before but need to use it in a project over the next few months, but due to a lack of sales support from adobe I still havent had a response advising me which version we need so thought someone here may be able to put some light on it hopefully...

Basically we're building a microsite for a comedy channel and we need to record client-side webcam streams (multiple) and encode their short 20 second clips into .flv files, saving on our server ready for streaming/re-play.

I have not been able to determine if FMS 3.5 will be able to do all of this. I read some posts from a couple of years ago which stated you need a 3rd party encoder tied into FMS to do the full record/encode job. Is this still the case ? (I was looking at Autodesk Cleaner XL) or can i now do it with FMS?There's not enough detail on the product site to explain exactly what Flash Media Encoding Server does... does it only sit on the server and encode? or does it have all the functionality of FMS 3.5 + the encoder??

Sorry if these questions sound obvious, I'm an AS developer and it's the first time i've needed to use FMS.

Thanks,
Sean

[Guest]

FMES is a dedicated encoding server to do scheduled trans-coding of lots of media files to FMS compatible formats.

FMIS 3.5 should be an obvious choice, which is able to do all that a typical publish-record-playback use case requires.

[clustaSean]

That's great, thanks for your input Pankaj. We will go ahead and buy FMIS 3.5 then.

I don't suppose you know the limitations on encoding multiple files simultaneously do you? i.e. will it just slow the encoding process down if multiple people are recording their webcam streams at once? Will it need to que them? Or is there an imposed limit in FMS? (i.e. only 3 streams simultaneously).

Thanks again

[Guest]

Minor clarifications:
FMS never does any video encoding. Instead, it can take already encoded stream from a live publisher (e.g. flash client) and has server-side capabilities to record it on its file system so that the recording may also be served On Demand.

Also, FMS & FMES are two separate server software. FMES can encode media files on large scale, where as FMS can deliver interactive media to many clients.

[clustaSean]

So FMIS alone won't do what I need then? I do need to be able to take a stream from a webcam (client) and somewhere along the way encode that to an flv filetype ready for storage and distribution on the server and playback through the flash player. I suppose this means I will need both the FMIS and FMES to be able to do all of this (otherwise when does it get converted to an flv file?). It's a bit confusing to be fair, i dont understand why adobe don't call back when they can sell us products worth thousands !!

[Guest]

Flash player is the one which does video encoding while publishing live stream, So one doesn't need a separate encoder for such primitive cases. I would refer you to have a look at FMS developer center on adobe.com for sample-code and best practices:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/

You can always share your problems with fellow developers here.

I hope this helps.

[clustaSean]

Hey, thanks dude. Think I'm starting to get my head round it now. Some useful looking tutorials on the devnet. :)

Cheers

[Guest]

@luckyjigg You can probably upload videos to the Plimus system without needing to use FMS. You'll have to ask the people at Plimus how their system interacts with FMS, I can't tell from their site.

Jody

[nebbb]

If you need simple webcam video recording/playback, you might check out the API on http://nimbb.com. Uses FMS in background.