People are doing some great things with my Flash411 and Adobe Developer Connection tutorials. Here’s one project by Tom Cipriano, a playlist of videos from the 93rd Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show. Enjoy!

http://www.thirdfloorsolutions.com/fs/videoplaylist.html

A fake Flash Player upgrade is being used to cloak a nasty piece of malware.

Be on the lookout for email that looks like a news item linking you to a video. The page then prompts you to download an ‘updated’ version of the Flash Player.

Bastards!

Information here: http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/obamaspeech.asp

I often hear complaints about a steep learning curve in developing FMS applications, and the lack of good sample code and simple administration utilities. Well, complain no more! Adobe has released a suite of free tools to help you get started and be more productive, announced on FMS Product Manager Kevin Towes’ blog. Here’s what you have to work with:

FLVCheck Tool: Let’s you verify that a video will run properly on FMS. Supports MP4 and FLV files.
FMSCheck Tool: Provides information about whether the server is running or not, its response time, and if any FMS core processes are not responding.
AS3 Dynamic Streaming Class: Enable mulitbitrate delivery easily in Flash CS4, Flex 3 or the Flex SDK.
FLVPlayback 2.5: The updated version of the FLVPlayback component for use in Flash CS4, with increased performance and quality for both video on demand files and live streams. Features “significant” bug fixes for streaming and support for Dynamic Streaming and DVR functionality with FMS 3.5. Only compatible with ActionScript 3.0. You can now use these classes in Flex 3 or the Flex SDK, in addition to Flash CS4.
F4V Post Processor: FMS 3.5 and later and Flash Media Live Encoder 3 can record content in MPEG-4 format using “fragments” or “moof atoms.” Some tools and players do not support this, and therefore will not be able to recognize these FMS-created files. This tool takes the information from all of the moof atoms and combines it into a single moove atom and outputs a new file. Use for prepping videos for editing in Premiere, HTTP delivery, or for playback in Adobe Media Player. Windows or Linux only.

You do need to register with Adobe.com (if you haven’t already) for access, but its free, as are all of the tools.

Yes, the day is finally here! Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Media Live Encoder 3.0 have been officially released.

Download Flash Media Server 3.5 (free developer version)

Download Flash Media Live Encoder 3.0 (FREE)

Flash Media Server 3.5 offers some powerful new features such as improved H.264 performance, “DVR” functionality, Dynamic Streaming, and HTTP delivery (Apache server built in). For more info, visit http://www.adobe.com/go/fms.

The licensing costs have stayed the same, at $4,500 for Flash Media Interactive Server and $999 for Flash Media Streaming Server. The Developer edition is still free, and allows 10 simultaneous connections (can be used for commercial deployments).

Flash Media Live Encoder has also been upgraded, with support for multiple bitrate encoding (to take advantage of Dynamic Streaming in FMS 3.5), an updated user interface, enhanced auto-adjust capabilities to accommodate fluctuation in your connection when encoding, and improved file and stream management including file “chunking”.

Big day for Flash media — happy downloading!