A few days ago I spotted a Twitter conversation between Simon Whatley and Christian Heilmann which brought YQL back into my mind. In case you don't know, YQL stands for Yahoo Query Language is 'an expressive SQL-like language that lets you query, filter, and join data across Web services'. In short, it's a sort of API to a lot of other APIs, and then some. It's also very easy to use since it's effectively just like SQL. For example you can use this example query to get details about a specific Vimeo video. But not only can you query web services using YQL, you can even scrape HTML pages which do not expose an API - very powerful stuff.

Flickr is one of the APIs that's also supported and I figured that it would be a great addition to one of my products, Scribblar, if a user could get easy access to all the images for a given keyword which are released under a Creative Commons license. Again this is very easy with YQL using a query such as this one.

I've created a simple Flex app which wraps the functionality provided by YQL and the Flickr API. You can check it out here. The source overview is here, and the downloadable zip here.

Does HTML5 Video Playback Hog More CPU Than Flash?

This is not a trick question, but more of a pushback on the recent FUD that various people have been spreading. Quotes such as 'HTML5 video uses 10% CPU while Flash uses 100%' were both unprofessional and not backed up by any actual data. The short answer to the above question could in fact be yes - if I wanted to spin these results, but the more correct way of putting things would actually be: 'It depends'.

My co-author Jan has gone through some lengths to come up with the most thorough like-for-like comparison of HTML5 versus Flash video decoding requirements as far as CPU usage is concerned. His conclusions follow below, and I recommend you head over to his blog for the full story. [More]

Streamingmedia.com have published a great tutorial and overview on how to get started with Amazon's new Cloudfront Streaming service. While the service currently only supports on-demand streaming of Flash video content the company also has plans to support live streaming in the near future. This service looks like a very cost effective and scalable video streaming service, and is relatively easy to set up.

If you are interested in this service and require any help or advice then please feel free to get in touch. I've set up several video streaming environments on Amazon Cloudfront as well as EC2 in the past.

Job: Two Flash/Web Developer Positions in London

Evolution Gaming, an industry leader in live, real-time online casino games, is currently looking to fill two positions. The first one is for a Senior Flash Developer with a focus on ActionScriptwhile the second position is more of a general web development role with a focus on HTMl/CSS and also Flash.

You can read the full requirements for the Senior Flash Developer role here, the details for the Web Developer Role are here.

Interested parties should direct their CV and accompanying covering letter to heidi@evolutiongaming.com or call +44 207 563 9140

My friend Jan has published some quality comparisons between the Ogg and H.264 video codec. For those who don't know, Ogg Theora is the video container format and codec favoured by Mozilla for playback of web video in HTML5 whereas H.264 is a widely popular codec - one may say the industry standard - that is used for all types of content from Flash (on sites that include YouTube and Hulu) to Blu-Ray and DVB broadcast television.

I can't say that I'm surprised about Jan's test results in which H.264 comes out on top. Ogg Theora is quite a dated codec which is based on Ons'2 VP3 specs, and which has become a free, open standard. Unfortunately the label of free software alone does not guarantee that Ogg Theora won't be vulnerable to yet unknown patents. For those reasons I would personally be very surprised if Ogg Theora sees any significant uptake in the future, even once HTML5 becomes more widely supported. Major players such as Apple and Nokia were amongst those who opposed the inclusion of this specific format as part of the proposed HTML5 specs, and it is highly doubtful that Mozilla alone has enough leverage to give this compression format a new lease of life.
Meanwhile both Safari and Chrome are focused on supporting H.264 which they consider to be a better choice for web video.

Check Jan's full article here and stay tuned for some more video codec specific tests in the coming weeks.

Flash Player and AIR Announced for Android

As you may already know, the Mobile World Congress kicked off today in Barcelona and it did not take long for the first announcements to hit the interwebs. Adobe has of course a large presence at MWC and today announced support for Flash Player as well as Adobe AIR on Android devices. While we have seen some demos of Flash running on Android already, support for the AIR runtime gives developers yet another option for deployment on mobile devices, besides the traditional Flash content for (mobile) web browsers that is going to hit mobile screen sometime in the first half of 2010. Adobe states that 19 of the top 20 phone OEMs are committed to delivering Flash and expects more than half of all smartphones to ship with Flash Player by the end of 2012. 19 out of 20... can you guess the missing one? [More]

My friends Lisa Larson-Kelly and Jan Ozer are hosting a one day workshop in Manhattan on March 23rd 2010 covering streaming media production and Flash video delivery.

These guys truly know their stuff and I can only recommend taking part in this one-off event, especially if you are in the New York area and interested in all things Flash video. The course will not only include video production techniques and Flash Player development but also extend to encoding in H.264 for Flash, i-Pod/Phone/iPad and Silverlight as well as a Flash Media Server Crash Course, amongst other topics.

Sign up now and take advantage of the early bird pricing at $170 for any half day course, or $300 for the full day - a total steal if you ask me. For more information visit Jan's site.

OSMF 0.9 Released

Version 0.9 of the Open Source Media Framework has just been released. For those who haven't heard about OSMF (formerly codenamed Strobe) yet, it is an ActionScript based framework to help facilitate the easy development of media players running on the Flash Platform. The framework is open source and supports not only video and audio playback but also other asset types such as images, SWFs and the like. It could develop into a de-facto standard for Flash based media player development.

With the 0.9 Sprint release the team have effectively locked the APIs in order to prepare for version 1.0.

Some of the new features in 0.9 include support for HTTP streaming (a sign of things to come), a SMIL plug-in and an OSMF Sample Player. There's also a comprehensive Developer's Guide in PDF format.

If you have plans to take a closer look at OSMF then now would be a good time as the 1.0 release is getting closer.

A picture says more than a thousand words (although these are very wise words).

Flash Video versus Desktop Video - Apples and Oranges

Amongst all the noise that is currently being emitted after the jesusiPad announcement there are a also some high quality gems of content emerging, and Mike Melanson's piece on the different problems which the Flash Player solves when it comes to video delivery is one of them.

In particular Mike explains how a desktop video player and Flash Player differ. One obvious difference which surprisingly often gets overlooked, is that Flash Player is not just a video delivery medium but so much more than that. If you think back a few years there was barely any support for video in the Flash Player, and the only reason we hear so many complaints about its performance is due to the fact that so many people are using it these days. Flash has had an unprecedented growth curve when it comes to video delivery on the web, but it was a popular plugin way before then.
The issue Mike explains well in his article is that of users comparing apples to oranges a lot of the time: they compare a browser plugin to a desktop tool. In Mike's words, "a desktop player usually plays a linear media file from start to finish. Flash Player solves a different problem: It plays linear media files from start to finish while combining the video with a wide array of graphical and interactive elements (buttons, bitmaps, vector graphics, filters), as well as providing network, webcam, and microphone facilities, all programmable via a full-featured scripting language, and all easily accessible via a web browser using a plugin that most of the browsing population already has installed."

Mike's article in full can be found here. Please bookmark it and send to everyone who asks you next time: "Can you explain why a video player like VLC can play the same flv file with less CPU usage than the Flash Player?".

And the main takeaway: "The Flash Player works to solve the problem of making video accessible via the web browsing environment. In contrast, a desktop media player plays a file using a dedicated, single-purpose application."

Adobe have just announced the immediate availability of the version 2 of Stratus, an update to the existing Peer 2 Peer rendezvous service that was launched in 2008.

In Adobe's words: "Adobe Stratus 2 enables peer assisted networking using the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) within the Adobe Flash Platform. The most important features of RTMFP include low latency, end-to-end peering capability, security and scalability. These properties make RTMFP especially well suited for developing real-time collaboration applications by not only providing superior user experience but also reducing cost for operators."

While this sounds like the same capabilities that the previous version of Stratus offered it contains some significant updates, the main one being support for RTMFP Groups. [More]

Radical Flash Chat - Video Chat Framework

I've just received an interesting email from Jaromir Sivic, a czech developer who sent me news about a project of his called 'Radical Flash Chat'.
While I haven't tried myself yet, Jaromir describes it as a framework that enables PHP and ASP.NET developers to build and manage their own Video Chats, Flash Chats and other multimedia videconferencing applications easily in a very short amount of time. The configuration screen certainly looks quite promising, listing both Wowza and Red5 as a Media server option. There's also an online demo that you can try (that's if it is online, which seems to be fairly intermittent).

I encourage you to try Jaromir's product and share your feedback with him, or indeed below in the comments.

I'm happy to post any news about similar projects or other news items, just drop me an email.

I'm very late with this piece of news, I know, but in case you haven't heard both Adobe and Wowza have released updates to their respective Media Server technologies. I must admit that one of these updates appears more significant than the other as Wowza have pushed out a major new version with Wowza Media Server 2.0.

Before I outline the details of that though let me first point you to the newest updater for FMS, bringing it to version 3.5.3. As always you can grab the file right here.
This version of FMS is essentially a service pack which includes bug fixes and performance improvements for DVR, Dynamic Streaming and playback. It even includes security fixes to correct some critical vulnerabilities.
The FLVCheck tool also saw an update, and Flash Media Server 3.5.3 now has full support for the smart buffer management controls introduced in Adobe Flash Player 10.1. These controls include support for seeking within the buffer, stepping through a video, slow and fast playback in the buffer as well as re-establishing a connection without interrupting the stream. You can find more details about the buffer enhancements in the Flash Player 10.1 ActionScript 3 API documentation that's now available on Labs.

The team at Wowza has been very busy too and released a massive update to their Wowza Media Server, updating the platform to what they describe as a Unified Media server. Unified because Wowza can now stream not only to Flash clients but also supports iPhone, Silverlight and even IPTV clients. Not too shabby!
In terms of transport mechanisms this means Wowza now supports Adobe's RTMP based protocols, Apple's HTTP Streaming, Microsoft's Smooth Streaming, RTSP/RTP delivery for Apple QuickTime, mobile and other clients as well as MPEG-TS for IPTV set-top delivery. The full press release is here.

I think it is awesome to have this kind of competition in the market and the work that the relatively small team at Wowza is churning out will certainly give Adobe some food for thought, especially when it comes to interoperability with other runtimes and platforms. I think if I was in Adobe's shoes I'd reach into my pocket and make them an offer they can't refuse - before somebody else does.

Flash Media Live Encoder for Mac Announced

Up to now Adobe has been offering the free Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder (FMLE) only as a Windows tool - but this is soon going to change.

The recently announced FMLE 3.1 for Mac OSX will finally bring this essential tool to the Mac platform. This can't come soon enough as it has been requested for a very long time.

FMLE 3.1 for Mac will work with the built-in iSight camera as well as devices such as Firewire cameras and video capture cards to support a broad range of use cases and workflows. Like the Windows version, the Mac version of FMLE 3.1 will be free.

A release date has not yet been announced, but you can register an interest in a private beta by signing up here.

This is what happens when you stand on the shoulders of giants - you don't quite know what you are doing, at least in my case.
I've been working on a way to dynamically load images into a Flex app and set them as the tiled background of a Canvas component. Luckily I spotted creacog's work which I adapted a little bit for my needs. You can see the results here.

So far the image loading and displaying as a borderskin of the Canvas works, but as you can see when you drag the box around is that as soon as scrollbars appear the image is no longer rendered and the Canvas's background color it displayed instead.

I'd appreciate any tips on this. You can see the sources by right-clicking the app or directly from here (the .zip is here).

Feel free to use and reuse this code if you find it useful, and remember to credit creacog.co.uk who has done the hard work on this.