Streaming Video with the F4V File Format
Adobe’s long awaited update to the FLV streaming video format, now called F4V, has finally come to fruition. It is true that F4V was supported as of version 9.0.r115 of the Flash player, but options were extremely limited as far as how to encode a video in that format. Included with each version of Creative Suite 4 (and Flash CS4 if purchased separately) is what Adobe is referring to as “Adobe Media Encoder CS4″. This is a substantial upgrade to the original “Flash Video Encoder” that has been around since Flash 8 was released, and includes a number of enhancements and major bug fixes. The most notable of these is the ability to encode to the new F4V format, which uses the H.264 video codec. This means that we can stream our videos in HD using a native Adobe Flash video format. Word on the street is that Flash Media Server 3 will get a significant upgrade any day now to support streaming of F4V files. It is unknown at this time whether or not this upgrade will actually be referred to as FMS4.
To get started with the F4V format, simply open the Flash Media Encoder CS4 program, and click “Add”. Now select a video file. Select the first arrow icon under “Format”.
The file that I selected was a .MOV file. However, assuming I want to use the F4V file format, I need to have “FLV | F4V” selected. Next, click the arrow icon under “Preset”, and choose “Edit Export Settings…” After selecting the Edit Export Settings option, a new window is brought up with a wide array of settings to customize the encoding. This is where we really see the enhancements that have been made with the new encoder. Now select the “video” tab in the middle of the window. Selecting the Video tab reveals a number of customization options.
After you’ve finished customizing the encoding options, select “OK” and then “Start Queue”. Your video will now start encoding with the options you selected. It is worth noting that you can save your customizations as a preset for easy access later.
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Posted by Dan Orlando on October 19th, 2008 :: Filed under Video Technology
Tags :: Adobe Media Encoder CS4, f4v encoding, streaming video, video encoding
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October 23rd, 2008
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October 26th, 2008
Correction: in the first paragraph I state that FMS3 may soon get an upgrade for streaming f4v video files. However, upon further research I’ve discovered that FMS3 already does support streaming F4V files. Until CS4, the challenge has been getting video files into that format in the first place. Now that Adobe has made that so easy to do with the Adobe Media Encoder that comes with CS4 though, anyone with access to a Flash server can immediately start streaming real HD F4V video files right away…the only caveat being that you need to obtain a copy of CS4 first in order to get access to the Adobe Media Encoder application.
February 23rd, 2009
Thanks for this post Dan.
I’m looking to be able to stream HD video within a blog. Do you know where I can read more about posting HD on the net in general?
With the way you mention here… Can the html code be posted into a blog for example to go get the video from the flash media server and if so which flash media server is the best/cheapest?
I’m not a flash expert does the media server have a built in player? Do you even have to open and do things in the flash CS4 application to stream HD video on the net or is it simply a matter of encoding like you say?
Or is there a different/better way to stream HD video on the net using the Adobe Media Encoder without using flash?
Sorry I have so many questions!
Regards,
Mike
February 26th, 2009
Mike, sorry for the delay in response. I’ve been a little under the weather.
With regard to your first question, there is a guy in Italy that publishes a blog with some great content on the subject. I need to archive my bookmarks from my previous boot drive to get the link as I was unable to find it on Google though. Check back tomorrow and I should have it posted. I’m also going to add him to my blogroll…not sure how he got left out.
When you encode and upload a new video, the video still needs a player. In other words, you need a flash video player to make the call to the rtmp url on the flash media server and stream the video. There are a lot of ways to do this. The most important question is a matter of whether or not the same player will need to call videos dynamically or can the path be statically linked. If it can be static, all you have to do is open up flash, create a new instance of the FLVPlayer component and set the URI path in the component inspector. The object code that is generated in the html file when you do a file->publish in Flash is what you want to embed in your html.
You can get your own version of Flash Media Server that is limited to video functionality only (i.e. with the additional RIA communication technology pulled out) for $999 from Adobe last time I checked.
Let me know if this answers your questions. I suspect that it may trigger new questions, so feel free to ask away and I will respond as promptly as possible.
Thanks.
March 9th, 2009
Hi Dan,
I’ve been checking back from time to time and just saw this response. Thanks for writing! Let me see how far I can get with this and then I’m sure I’ll have more questions. Also if you can find that link that would be fantastic.
Hope you are feeling better.
Regards,
Mike
PS I guess my first question is how to do it for free, or much cheaper than $1000.
Here is one I just found for $50.month:
http://www.streamguys.com/streamingservices/wowza.html
March 10th, 2009
I was unable to find the link. It looks like the site may have been taken offline…perhaps only temporarily.
Anyway, I’ve been researching the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform for a couple of articles I am writing, and I’d strongly encourage you to take a look at their EC2 technology. It stands for “Elastic Compute Cloud”, and is by far the neatest development I’ve seen in the tech arena in some time. You can basically deploy and scale a pre-configured cluster of servers. It’s really insane when you start to realize what can be done with this. Had I known about this a few months ago, I probably wouldn’t have signed a $14,000 dollar 1-year contract with a Content Delivery Network back in January for the Avijax program I created. (sigh)
Anyway, here’s a link to more information on what exactly EC2 is: http://aws.amazon.com/
The prices are pretty reasonable. I really like their unique pricing model, where you are charged by number of hours of service and number of instances (servers in your EC2 cloud/cluster). This is pay-per-usage with almost unlimited scalability… a concept those of us with limited financial resources dreamed about for years.
Based on my research, there is a pre-configured Wowza Media Server AMI; which stands for “Amazon Machine Instance” – it is the equivalent to what we refer to as “virtual machines”, but it can use resources from multiple computers which is what makes it unique.
I think you will find this type of solution more cost effective than anything else you’re going to find out there right now.
Once I have completed my articles regarding this technology, I will post links to them, which might provide further insight. However, the amount of documentation resources that Amazon has already made available is quite impressive.