January 2009 Archives

In a recent press release, Adobe announced that it would publish the specification for it's Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). The protocol is used to transfer messages between Flash servers and the Flash Player for Rich Internet Applications and high-performance streaming audio and video.

The proprietary protocol has never been published. As a result, third party's have been left to reverse engineer the protocol in an effort to develop alternative yet compatibile solutions to Adobe's own line of Flash Media Servers.

Vendors like Wowza and the open-source project Red5 will benefit greatly from this announcement. I predict that there will also be a slew of alternatives to these as well as a few specialized implementations of the spec.

The announcement comes at an interesting time. Adobe's recent partnership with Intel to bring Flash-based streaming video to the living room means that they need full community support behind Flash and it's messaging technology, RTMP. It also means theres plenty of opportunity to create all kinds of new services that weren't easily achievable because of high server software costs.

Version 2.0 of SpringPlayer is now available. This Flash-based video player supports all the latest video standards in the Flash platform including H.264/AAC and HD. The player is available in two editions, Free and Professional. Both are based on the same code, but the Professional Edition includes support for Javascript control of the player, RTMP support and full source code. The Free edition is available under a creative commons license while the Professional edition is available under a commercial license from Flashcomponents.net.

KEY FEATURES

H.264/AAC & HD Support
The player requires Flash 9.0.115 and higher and supports H.264 (including HD material using main or high profiles).

Containers Supported
Can playback video in FLV, F4V, MP4, M4V and MOV containers.

Auto Scaling
Will automatically scale the video to the highest possible resolution while preserving the videos aspect ratio, or can simply scale to fill the dimensions of the player window.

Progressive and RTMP Streaming (Professional Version Only)
Supports both progressive downloads from web servers, and RTMP via Flash Media Server and Red5.

Easy To Use Interface
A symmetrically elegant user interface presents the user with only the most used controls in both windowed and fullscreen modes.

Fullscreen Support With Controls
Users have access to the same easy to use interface while in fullscreen mode.

Javascript Control (Professional Version Only)
Several functions are controllable via Javascript including volume, playing, pause, seek, timing information and loading another video.

Small File Size
The player weighs in at just under 13KB for the exported SWF.

Saves Volume Settings
When a user changes the volume of the player, the settings are saved. The next time they play a video on your site, their settings will be used.

Full Sources  (Professional Version Only)
Separate FLA and AS files included for CS3 and higher. Only two lines of code exist on the FLA's stage making it very easy to modify the look of the player without worrying about code modifications.

Visit the SpringPlayer project page for more details or to watch a demo of the player in action. You can also download the player and use it free of charge on your own personal or commercial site.