Critical security update to FMS 4.0.2 and earlier

Adobe has identified a critical security issue with FMS requiring an immediate update. If you are running FMS 4.0.2 or earlier (which is pretty much all versions of FMS out there today) a bug in memory handling could be used by an attacker to trigger a denial of service.

Bottom line: update today. Refer to Adobe’s security bulletin for more information about the problem, and a link to download the updater.

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb11-20.html

Adobe announced Creative Suite 5.5 this morning (usually they ship within about a month after breaking the news). There will be lots of enhancements in this release for those of us who need to design and deploy for mobile devices. They’ve also added two new products to the suites: Acrobat and Audition. (Audition will be replacing Soundbooth as Adobe’s professional audio editing tool.) Performance has been improved for video production and encoding, with new releases of Premiere and the Adobe Media Encoder.

To get up to speed quickly, check out these videos on Adobe.tv:

– Improved 64-bit Adobe Media Encoder CS5.5

– Integrated audio-for-video workflow

– Overview of what’s new in Adobe Audition CS5.5

– What’s new in Flash Builder 4.5

– Introducing Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK

– What’s new in Dreamweaver CS5.5

– Mobile development using Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK and Flash Builder 4.5

– Introducing Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP

– Coding productivity enhancements in Flash Builder 4.5

– Introducing Flash Catalyst CS5.5

– Understanding the new workflows in Flash Builder 4.5 and Flash Catalyst CS5.5

Definitely some compelling reasons for those of us running CS5 to upgrade, and even more reason for CS3 or CS4 users to get up to speed — especially if you need to deploy to devices (and who doesn’t)?

I hope you all got something useful from the session, and really did walk away feeling empowered to take the dive into FMS development.

As promised, here are the slides and files from the presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions I didn’t answer.

SLIDES (PDF, sorry about the large file size)

DEMO FILES

Special thanks to the fantastic Influxis team for their great blog posts and examples on both DVR and Dynamic Streaming. (If you need FMS hosting, you’ll want to call these guys. Seriously.)

And kudos also to David Hassoun for his comprehensive articles and sample code (most of which I relied on heavily in my presentation).

Thanks again, and see you next year, Minneapolis!

http://www.webkitchen.be/2008/12/23/8-misconceptions-about-flash-video/

cheers, and happy christmas!
// Lisa

Gmail Video Chat
Today they announced that Gmail will now support a free, cross-platform “standards-based” voice and video chat. You need to install a custom plug-in, and the feature only works with Gmail in your browser.

The most interesting part to me is their use of H.264 encoding. We’ve been trying to get Flash to support that (or at least VP6) for some time now, but Adobe’s been reluctant to increase the size of the Flash Player to accommodate it.

More info: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/say-hello-to-gmail-voice-and-video-chat.html

YouTube Live
They are also working on live streaming on YouTube (possibly using a related plug-in?) This looks like it’ll be a service that competes with sites such as Justin.TV, Stickam, etc. The official launch is set for Nov. 22, so stay tuned for more info!
Post on AlleyInsider: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/youtube-plans-to-launch-live-streaming-november-22

http://www.immersivemedia.com//index.php
My heart’s all a-flutter. Amazing stuff.

Pacifica: Voice, messaging, presence into Flash and Flex apps. High quality voice. Real-time collaboration
High Quality voice chat
Text instant messaging
NAT/Firewall Traversal
Ajax, HTML, JS, Flex, Flash
t/c video Chat
P2P
AIR
PSTN Access — connect into telephone network
Private beta starting this month, and hiring developers and quality engineers.
Will be open to developers to build custom apps.

CoCoMo: New version of Adobe Connect (Nigel Pegg)
Client UI has been rewritten in Flex (was Flash MX)
The worldwide hosted infrastructure will be opened to developers to access via Flex.
API/components will be available, along with the foundation classes
(Finally opening screensharing?) more in a few… battery’s dying!

On2 has announced support in their Flix encoder (and even more importantly, in Flash 9/Moviestar) for a new codec profile: VP6-S.

From the press release:

The new VP6-S video profile offers greater simplicity in the encoding and playback of high-resolution, full-screen video, thereby allowing high definition video to be streamed and played back within processor power limitations posed by the majority of personal computers. On2 will ship its flagship Flix Engine upgrade for VP6-S mid-October, concurrently with the Adobe Flash Player 9 update. The remaining Flix product line with VP6-S upgrades will ship during the fourth quarter of 2007.

The target of this new codec profile is high-definition/high bitrate video on machines with slower processors. The original codec, VP6-E is still the recommended format for typical video with bitrates at or below 500Kbps.
Flash video used to be simple… ‘Spark or VP6?’ No longer! Encoding is going to be a bigger and bigger issue with Flash video, as we get more choices, optimized for different deployments. This is great news, though, for audiences with slower, older machines. The Flash video experience is getting better and better for everyone!

{grumble}Now I need to go update my MAX presentation on encoding for next week, again…{/grumble}

!! UPDATE !!

I just spoke with Mike Savello of On2 about the details of this announcement.

Apparently, this new profile has been part of the Moviestar release from day one, but was overshadowed by the announcement of H.264 support.

According to Mike, where the new codec shines is in high datarate video / slow CPU environments. The VP6-S profile is much less complex than the standard VP6-E currently in the Flash Player 8. The videos do not increase in filesize, nor do they decrease noticeably in quality, but they consume less CPU overhead on playback. On2 will have more specific benchmark data at their booth next week at MAX in Chicago.