Time Warner and Adobe Get Together – HBO Coming in Flash?

Posted on March 3, 2009 by ryanstewart

I’m traveling this week but I got a heads up on a press release for our partnership with Time Warner. I haven’t had time to ask many questions, but I liked Liz Gannes’ post. At a broad level, we’ll be working with them on things like DRM and analytics, two very important aspects of the rich media experience. I’m still not a big fan of DRM for things that I own, but when it comes to streaming content that you’re getting for free or renting, then DRM is an important part of the ecosystem. And we’ve been working hard on a DRM solution that is as transparent and seamless as the Flash Player itself. With this partnership I hope we’ve got some new lines of communication into the content creators so we can come up with a solution that works for them and the users.

Andy Plesser over at Beet.TV has some additional information up and an interview with Jennifer Taylor of Adobe. I’m on a train with crappy wifi so I can’t get the whole thing to play, but it seems like it might fill in some of the gaps.

I was also really stoked about the line regarding HBO and Flash:

“HBO will soon relaunch www.hbo.com making extensive use of the Adobe Flash Platform.”

I’ll try to get more info on what this actually means, but it would be awesome if you could view HBO content online in the browser with the Flash Player.

Whitehouse.gov Streaming Obama’s First Press Conference Live in Flash!

Posted on February 9, 2009 by ryanstewart

This is really cool and I had no idea it was coming. The White House is streaming Obama’s first Presidental press conference live using Flash. You can also get the feed on Hulu.com. What’s very cool is that the stream requires Flash Player 10, so they’re using the latest. This is a really big win for Flash, and I’m stoked to see that the official site of the White House decided that Flash was the best technology for the job. I’ll update the post as I get more info and hopefully later with viewership numbers.

Update: Some info on the Hulu stream. It’s also repurposing the Fox News feed. They’re using Akamai as the CDN and they didn’t do much in the way of marketing, so it sounds like a bit of a test run – on the Hulu side. There should be final numbers later on, and I’m hoping to get more info on the Whitehouse.gov side as well.

Akamai on Dynamic Streaming

Posted on February 9, 2009 by ryanstewart

Andy Plesser has a good interview up with Mike Afergan, an SVP at Akamai in which he talks about the benefits of dynamic streaming, which is part of the latest version of Flash Media Server. Video delivery is an area that I think still has a ton of room for innovation and as I’ve talked to the folks in our FMS group, I’m excited by what they’ve got cooking.

We talked about RTMFP, which we added to Flash Player 10. RTMFP opens up the possibility of creating P2P services in the future with FMS. Once the clients “check in” with FMS, they’ll be able to stream content directly to each other. This should help with quality for live or heavy-traffic events because everyone can share content and bandwidth. We’ve actually got a cloud-hosted service codenamed “Stratus” that will let you try out the technology right now using Adobe’s infrastructure. You can sign up for a developer key on Adobe Labs.

AMP Adds Sony Content (And you can Watch Ghostbusters)

Posted on July 22, 2008 by ryanstewart

Heh. I always love when I find out stuff we’re doing by clicking on a Techmeme link. I must not have been paying attention, but it looks like we’re adding Sony content to Adobe Media Player. As Liz from NewTeeVee notes, it’s mostly old stuff like Jerry Maguire and Men in Black, but who doesn’t love the classics? And it’s a first (I think) that we’re getting full length movies in AMP, so that’s pretty cool.

It also sounds like we’re going to be adding some new CBS stuff and according to CNet we even get Ghostbusters. Kick ass!

Beet.TV on Adobe Media Player and Advertising

Posted on May 30, 2008 by ryanstewart

Beet.TV has an interview up with Deeje Cooley, an Internet TV Evangelist here at Adobe, on some of the advertising models inside of Adobe Media Player. AMP is one of the more interesting products that Adobe is working on I think. We’ve got some really great analytical tools in the background and it sounds like publishers are also starting to take notice. Deeje provides a good overview of the platform and a bit about how it works.

One of the things they cover is how you can get your own content into AMP. One way is to create a media RSS feed for your video content and then anyone can add that feed to their AMP playlist. To get listed in the catalog it sounds like we’re still working on the specifics, but we’re hoping to make it very easy down the road.

There was also recently an interesting article in Forbes about YouTube and more generally some of the findings of content providers as they move to the web:

YouTube has done a lot of experimenting with ad formats and found some surprises. Pre-roll video ads prior to the main video cause the audience to click away up to 70% of the time. Better: short banners that pop up from the bottom of the video window. The NBA channel runs rollover Patrón tequila ads that turn into a video how-to for making margaritas. “It’s finally a way that advertisers can leverage the massive amount of video streams without the fear of being next to the soccer kid getting kicked in the nuts,” says Davis Brewer, lead strategist for emerging channels for media planning firm Spark Communications. People click on those rollover ads 8 times as often as on standard display ads next to the video. The rollover ads are most effective if they appear 15 seconds into the video. Any earlier and people get turned off. When the rollover is run in tandem with a display ad next to the video box, the chance of someone clicking can be 46 times as good.

Those are all things AMP supports and things that Flash makes very easy. Interactive video has been a strength of the platform from day one and I think going forward that’s going to be very valuable to advertisers, content providers, and stat geeks trying to figure out how to best reach an audience.

Beet.tv with a ton of Flash Lite Info/Content

Posted on March 18, 2008 by ryanstewart

Andy Plesser over at Beet.tv is becoming the multimedia guru when it comes to Flash Lite. He has a couple of interviews that are especially applicable with the announcements earlier this week about there being 500 million Flash Lite-enabled devices and Microsoft licensing the Flash Lite player for Windows Mobile.

The first interview is with Rhett Woods, the director of Mobile Expression here at Adobe. He talks with Andy about all the cool stuff Flash Lite can do and shows some demos of video running on it. The second interview is with Brian Frank working with Mobile Applications and Solutions at Adobe. Brian provides a pretty neat history of Flash Lite and talks about the fact that Japan has been doing rich Mobile applications for 5 years now. Both are worth checking out, especially with the Flash Lite news this week. Thanks for getting this on camera, Andy.

[tags]Beet.tv, Flash Lite, Adobe, Flash[/tags]

Firebrand.com – The Best Time Wasting RIA Ever

Posted on January 30, 2008 by ryanstewart

Ted blogged about Firebrand.com but I didn’t get a chance to check it out until tonight and now I wish I would have waited. It’s actually the most ridiculous premise ever: watch commercials over and over again. But they cherry pick the best commercials so it’s one of the more entertaining RIAS that I’ve seen. The idea is brilliant because they’ve got a great user interface that keeps the branding of the commercial you’re watching prominent. Think a Coke commercial is great? Click the Coke logo and you can start watching all of the best Coke ads. It’s all of the best commercials put in a format that lets you enjoy them as art. You can even use the “post this” feature to link to your favorites.

Firebrand.com is going to be hosting all of the commercials from this years Super Bowl so you’ll be able to check out all the good ones in one place. It actually annoyed me that I couldn’t go to a place and find funny commercials that I liked. The very nature of commercials means I should be able to easily find them. Now I can. Firebrand.com is like a bunch of 30 second tic tacs of pure awesome.

I mean seriously, the Magic Fridge whenever you want? Brilliant. And it’s all Flex.

[tags]Firebrand, Flex, Flash[/tags]

Get Your Flash On

Posted on November 17, 2007 by ryanstewart

Flash On Last week while I was in Switzerland, Andy Plesser posted about a new campaign that Adobe is running around Flash video. He’s got a good interview up with Mark Randall about the whole deal and it’s going to include the first ever all-Flash billboard on Times Square (I need to find a customer visit in NYC). The campaign is titled “Flash On” and the promo site has a lot of cool content that’s being distributed using Flash.

I wouldn’t normally post about a marketing campaign, but frankly I think it’s good that Adobe is finally talking and promoting the fact that we have a ton of great technology for video on the web. Rich Media is an important part of what’s making the web grow and prosper. Adobe has kind of been in the shadows helping things along but I never felt like we got to tell our whole story. I’m not sure how much a marketing campaign will help with that, but maybe it will start to raise awareness of things like Flash Media Server, our H.264 support and other things we’re doing to make video fun and easy with Flash.

[tags]Flash, Rich Media, Flash On[/tags]

How Viable is Ultra High Quality Video on the Web?

Posted on July 24, 2007 by ryanstewart

Stage6 NewTeeVee has a post that Stage 6, DivX’s online video sharing website, has been spun off due to “a desire to decrease operating expenses, as Stage6 requires a lot of capital, especially as it gets more popular” according to the company. DivX quality has always been good and when compared to full DVDs, it’s also lightweight. But as an online video sharing format it doesn’t appear to have what I’ll call scalable high quality.

People talk a lot about making video on the web better but because the rate at which that video is being consumed is so high, you also have to think of costs. As a result, there is a balance of quality and size that we’ve always dealt with, but seems to be more important now that video is popular. That seems to be one of the big reasons behind Flash’s success: it was easy, had good enough quality and was cheap to stream/download.

[tags]Stage6, Divx, Rich Media, Flash Video[/tags]

GigaOm also has a side-by-side of YouTube and Stage6 with the “Dancing” video. I love that clip.

Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding

Just an average guy trying to drink above average beer.

Category Archives: Flash Video