Tag Archives: Flash Video

New Flash Player with H.264 GPU Decoding for Mac

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Thibault Imbert just blogged about the release of Flash Player 10.1.82.76, which includes support for H.264 GPU decoding on the Mac.

You should notice now a nice difference when playing H.264 content on your Mac in terms of CPU usage. We rarely enable new features in security releases but we really wanted to enable such a cool feature. For more details about it, Tinic already posted about this.

Some of you may remember talk of a Flash Player “Gala” that was put out as a beta right before Flash Player 10.1 was released. The GPU decoding didn’t make it into the 10.1 release so we had to wait for a security release to add it. That security release is here and it should make quite a bit of difference for Mac users who are playing H.264 video through Flash Player.

Watch the Masters Tournament Live with Flash Media Server

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I’ll be honest. I think golf is for sissies and for me the Masters is just a few days where ESPN.com is cluttered with stuff I don’t care about. But some people really love their Masters Tournament, and if you’re going to watch it, you might as well enjoy it live in HD right in your browser. Both Masters.com and CBSSports.com have live coverage courtesy of Flash Media Server. CBSSports.com gives you a low and high connection option while Masters.com has it in full HD glory.

Adobe’s Kevin Towes Makes the Streaming Media All-Stars List

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This is pretty cool. Every year Streaming Media picks an all-star team that consists of some of the most influential people in the world of online video — people who have made a big difference in bringing, creating, and distributing video on the web. The list this year is a great one with folks like Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove, Jason Kilar, the CEO of Hulu……….and our own Kevin Towes, the product manager for Flash Media Server.

It’s been really fun to watch as Flash has completely changed how people watch video on the web. The FMS team deserves a lot of kudos for enhancing and optimizing the video experience for everyone, and wins like MLB.com or Hulu are a good indication that we’re doing something right. So congrats to Kevin and everyone on the FMS team. Here’s Kevin’s card and responses to some Streaming Media questions:

towesKevin Towes, Product Manager, Adobe Flash Media Server, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Previous job titles:

  • Principal Consultant, New Toronto Group
  • Co-Founder, Pangaea New Media
  • Director, Juno Awards Online
  • Professor Media Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto

Proudest achievements:
-Juno Awards Online broadcasts (1996) – Fresh out of University with lots of ideas, I worked to help bring the Canadian Music Industry online starting with the annual music awards show, the Juno Awards (equivalent to the Grammy’s in the USA). We set up shop next to the broadcast trucks with direct access to the top names in Canadian Music including Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLaughlin, Shania Twain, Maynard Ferguson, Oscar Peterson, Tragically Hip, and many more. We worked with early streaming technology like Progressive Networks (now Real) to provide the postage stamp video over dial up modems – Our first event hosted 25 concurrent streams growing to over 200 (which at the time was huge).

-Emmy Nomination (2002) – CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) Vancouver hosted a daily program live called “ZeD uncut” – ZeD was a new-age show that toyed with “interactive” and culture blending film, music, television, text, image and interactive together to form a 1 nightly program across the nation’s network. I worked with the CBC Vancouver team to create “the Wall” – an interactive place that users could use their webcam to place their video stream to be invited to join the live television broadcast from their living room. We also created video-based instant polling and real time chat. Tens of thousands of people participated during the lifetime of the show and became what we know today as the social network.

-Flash Media Server 3 and 3.5 (2008) – Hosted by the top 20 CDN’s worldwide and responsible for driving higher quality, and higher valued video experiences we’ve come to expect from the web. Helping to drive experiences such as Masters.com, NFL.com, MySpace.com and uStream.com – FMS is a vital part of the video experience on the web today. I wrote the first book on Flash Media Server back in 2001 and I would rank my participation in these new releases as part of my top achievements in the Streaming Media industry.

Next big thing:

  • The future of Flash Media distribution and Video on the Adobe Flash Platform (increasing quality, capacity, security, engagement and the overall experience)
  • Helping people find new ways to “interact” with video experiences through technology like DVR and video chat
  • Helping content owners (and the industry) find new revenue streams with video on the web

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

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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!

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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.

whitehouse_stream