Just had a chance to test the Flash Media Encoder and was pretty impressed. We’ve been using Flash Media Server for our VOD materials but have gone to QuickTime for live events. The main problem with FMS with a live stream is that it will only broadcast using the Spark codec and not VP6. FME changes that by allowing a VP6-encoded stream to be bounced off of FMS and broadcast to client apps.
We tested a stream from FME capturing both a live camera feed and a DVD source and sending them out to FMS for reception by client machines This was only a test to see how well this solution would work in the situation of a live event. Like I mentioned previously, I was very impressed with the quality of result and have no reservations doing a live stream via Flash now. There are a few points-to-note picked up during the process which I will list here:
- Will not work on Windows Vista :(
- Seems to be very good at picking up various video and audio sources
- Could use some advanced preset customization settings
Regarding my last point, there is a “presets.xml” file within the FME application directory that can be edited to allow for custom presets. The only drawback here is that you cannot perform custom mods on-the-fly as you must restart the app to pick up any XML changes.
A great beginning and I’m looking forward to version 1.x… or native support for VP6 in FMS3 so I can write my own capture app.
What’s most annoying for me is screen sizes. I try and set a 400×300 PAL setting in the config file & it simply refuses to encode at 400×300. Those values (not sure if they actually come from the card) seem to be set. Im using an Osprey 440 with 4 inputs (all working great by the way Adobe – yeeh) on a 1U 4cpu amd encoding box but gaddamit i want 400×300 as it’s the perfect resolution to show 340kbps video at both normal & full screen *without too much distortion.
http://www.viewcast.com/pages.asp?page=osprey-440
cheers,
Biffer Rowley – webtelevised.com
Yes- things do seem to be locked down a little more than one would like. I didn’t mention it above but the choices given for the audio compression were pretty inflexible to say the least…