Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

leegrosbauer's picture

Adobe FMLE 3.1 for Mac has been released. It's freeware. FMLE 3.1 enables high definition encoding and streaming in the H.264 and VP6 codecs. By also integrating third party virtual cam tools with quartz compositions, those compositions can be streamed in HD to sites such as Ustream, Livestream, Justin.tv, etc.

See 'Streaming With Quartz Composer' on the Kineme Wiki for additional streaming details and resources.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

I guess I should add 'live' streaming as in 'live' quartz compositions, in case that wasn't clear. It takes some processing power, needless to say.

cybero's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

What it is and what it does.

Quote:

Adobe® Flash® Media Live Encoder 3.1 live audio and video capture software is a media encoder that streams audio and video in real time to Flash Media Server software or Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS). When high-quality streaming is your priority, Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 can help you broadcast live events and around-the-clock broadcasting such as:

from adobe's site.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/ [FOC].

_caveats :-

the free media development server is a win or linux only option.

the media streaming server 3.5 is a 1st time buy of $995.

the media interactive server is a 1st time buy of $4,500_

bonuses

what it does, what you can do with it :-

the application captures from one's iSight or other DV camera input, not from a quartz composition, nor from an offline rendered movie file.

so far as I can tell, it won't allow for screen sharing input, but maybe that would be feasible with FMLE & QC. otherwise the Skype QC sharing trick just won't float.

It's great for live visuals - the higher the quality of the camera the better and do pay attention to the spanners in the works - settings icon in FMLE :-) .

you can point it to any RTMP server that works on a Mac if you are Mac solution based - see www.rtmpd.com & get ready to employ

svn co --username anonymous https://svn.rtmpd.com/crtmpserver/trunk/ crtmpserver

in your Terminal & you just might have freeware and reliable version of the sort of server you'll need, if you can get it to compile correctly - needs cmake.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

cybero wrote:
What it is and what it does.

Well shucks, Cybero. You've mostly instead presented a listing of caveats that best describe what it isn't and what it doesn't do.

Regardless that it's god-awful expensive, the Adobe streaming server isn't part of Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1. Why would we be considering it in this topic? It's merely presented in association there on the Adobe page as part of their monetizing effort, no?

I'm also curious about the many caveats about all the ways in which FMLE 3.1 doesn't work easily or well, and most notably about how it doesn't work with a quartz composition when there are ways that it does indeed work with a quartz composition?

Regarding Skype; no indeed. FMLE isn't the way to go about streaming quartz compositions via Skype, although that too can be otherwise accomplished. I have no clue why you would associate that functionality with FMLE. Skype imagery is already fairly high quality just as it stands, in my opinion.

I participated in the FMLE 3.1 for Mac beta program (which actually officially ends today, btw). I couldn't say so at the time because of the stupid NDA. Regardless, as part of that testing, I streamed numerous live quartz compositions in high definition H.264 codec from my computer to Ustream, Livestream, Justin.tv, BlogTV, and Bambuser.com. FMLE 3.1 for Mac worked well and it worked as described in the topic description above, including in conjunction with quartz compositions.

SteveElbows's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

What do you use to make it work with quartz compositions?

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

The compositions need to additionally be integrated with virtual cam tools, Steve. It's the virtual cam imagery that FMLE can access, encode and broadcast. That's easy enough to accomplish, however. The resources are all listed over in the Kineme Wiki under the topic 'Streaming With Quartz Composer'. Check those out first and observe the links to the numerous instructional resources. Additional queries may arise, but it's a good place to start.

By the way, I also suspect that FMLE might even be made to work with VDMX in a similar manner. I haven't tried that yet however so I'm tossing that out as a speculative teaser. I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong.

cybero's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

I actually did participate in the FMLE program , but didn't obtain sustained success in 10.6.2 with CamTwist or ManyCam as a virtualCAM with the FMLE I had to test with.

The fact is that now it does work. Hadn't even tried that in FMLE in 10.6.3 - dumb of me. Now I do have reasonably good quality streamable to an rtmp server , like some of the providers you mentioned above.

Believe it or not , despite all the caveats about certain cost aspects of some rtmp technology offerings, I still thought it to be a very useful item and now am beginning to think its pretty darned fine, I can get reasonably good 30 fps at 640 * 480 video with a dedicated streaming .qtz.

Brilliant.

I suppose it's to be expected that the music visualizer protocols aren't going to be directly supported by CamTwist, although I wonder if there isn't a way to get them working. Have you obtained success with a Kineme Audio Tools composition in CamTwist ?

Thanks BTW for all that you'll no doubt have done on behalf of FMLE, just as you've contributed to CamTwist.

Must shuffle off those experientially derived assumptions.

Now that 10.6.3 is here, I am finding a lot of things are working wonderfully well, with very few things failing, Aurora, for instance, now works beautifully once I've enabled its un-enabled clear patch and lowered the number of stacks to the sphere object at the root level of the Environment patch at root level of the final encapsulating macro.

dust's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

wow this looks cool lee. i got to try this. it would be interesting to see the difference of this solution comparative quicktime broadcasting, skype or even ichat streaming. as a flash encoding is usually a bit faster. im not sure if flash media server runs on mac yet but if anybody knows a good flash media server hosting solution that is affordable i would be interested in that info.

hey lee i don't know if you have tried evo cam yet but if you use that in combination with cam twist you can set up a streaming web server with qtz with multiple cams computers etc... i use for a baby cam sometimes and set the built in server to push and the stream is viewable on ipod. which i don't think flash is or without a hack.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

Ah! I hadn't seen you post in the FMLE beta forum, Cybero. Sorry. Did Adobe address your issues? I never had any problems with FMLE, but then I would only stream for between one half and one hour at a time. The only thing I didn't like was their software updating procedure. Definitely not Mac-like and with strong potential for user error, I had thought.

My main interest in posting the FMLE release notice here was merely to again encourage awareness of the potentials for promoting Quartz Composer. When I first started posting here eighteen months ago or so, most folks seemed convinced that live quartz compositions couldn't be presented cross-platform. I just want folks to know that they actually can be so presented, albeit perhaps not in quite the same fashion as we might normally perceive to be a standard presentation.

Frankly, it will ultimately be the active performance artists amongst us (certainly not me) who would make the best use of these tools. They're the folks with the creative vision and superior skill sets to best realize presentations of this type.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

Regarding your queries about audio in CamTwist; those are best asked in the CamTwist forums, but the likely answer(s) that you'll get is that CamTwist doesn't do audio and that you should probably instead consider using a mixer input or Soundflower.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

To be clear about FMLE; the significance is in now having the availability, on the Mac, of freeware H.264 and VP6 encoding via an encoder/streaming solution that is in regular usage with most common and popular broadcast hosting services. Those are the hosting services that most QC users would find to be the easiest places in which to gather audiences and in which to promote, as well as being the most convenient to use. For more exotic or less common server solutions, I'm not at all clear that FMLE is viable. It may be, but that's out of my realm of experience.

I never tried EvoCam dust, because it appeared to be primarily offering capability to aggregate a series of snapshots as opposed to continuous live streaming, but I may well have misunderstood it's primary functionality. I also couldn't discern if it had any type of Quartz Composer related integration. Are you aware of any?

cybero's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

thought as much :-) - cool stuff though, despite the lack of protocol support on that front. come to think of it, this kind of proves to me just how much of an enclave I've been in on 10.6.2, and it seems there's been a wide range of experience of the distro / update. 10.6.3 is a real improvement for me.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

It might have been some issue other than operating system? FMLE on 10.6.2 did work for me. I'm not sure what to suggest it may have been however. Anyway, I'm glad that's apparently resolved.

I myself haven't done much with QC since all the troubles started, essentially with 10.6 itself. It's simply been too confusing for me to follow all the irregularities and assessments thereof. That's why I stopped being active in these forums for a while. As a mere hobbyist, it was all just too inscrutable. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll now soon be returning to a more stable state of affairs with Quartz Composer.

cybero's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

pretty much volte face on that for me - almost completely 10.6.2, QC & OpenCL, with FMLE working to stream a camera, but not streaming QC via a virtual camera - until 10.6.3, just beginning to see the suitability of FMLE as a vehicle to stream QC via virtual camera in FMLE.

leegrosbauer's picture
Re: Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1 released for Mac.

Yeah. Again, to be clear about this FMLE thing; there's nothing new here except that Mac users finally have access to freeware HD Flash encoding and streaming. The Windows folks have had this capability for some time now. Prior to this our only alternatives on the Mac for streaming to Ustream, et al, was to use a costly commercial encoder or be confined to that low quality browser-based flash player encoder. How big a deal is it? Well, that's up to us. As a QC user, I'm enthused about being able to adapt it to QC presentation usages but there are certainly other more mainstream usage scenarios. The FMLE release for Mac is good for everyone, really.

Cybero (and anyone else, for that matter) ... if anyone should work up any test case exercises, I'd be more than delighted to participate as a test case audience member. Putting the whole scenario through it's paces could indeed be a worthy endeavor, I suspect.