With the update to its popular animation software, the company promises better image quality and DRM capabilities for customers creating online ads, on-demand video and more.Macromedia Inc. on Tuesday announced the release of its second-generation Flash Media Server, industrial-grade software that helps deliver a healthy number of the animated ads currently on display on Web pages.
Media, entertainment, telecommunications, retail and advertising companies—such as Akamai Technologies Inc., VitalStream Inc. and Limelight Networks—are using Flash video to deliver customized video to millions of viewers worldwide, the company said.
Using Flash Media Server 2 and the Flash Platform, Web publishers can integrate video into their sites and applications with full control over playback, interactivity and branding, Macromedia said.
Click here to read about Macromedia's new streaming media player.
Flash Media Server 2 is a foundation for delivering both recorded and live Flash video in large-scale deployments such as video on demand, live Web broadcasts, MP3 streaming, video blogging and video/audio chat applications, the company added.
"Flash allows a publisher complete creative control over a piece of work," Chris Hock, Macromedia's director of product management for Flash video, told Ziff Davis Internet. "Because Flash just works across all platforms—Windows, Linux, Mac, all of them—they can just QA it once and know it'll look good everywhere it's used."
Hock said that as broadband takes off, "the advertising dollars will follow. More people are going to be using on-demand audio and video, video messaging and blogging, and other services. That's what this is all about. The Flash server also allows for capturing—and even broadcasting—audio and video clips."
Flash servers are gaining market share in a segment long dominated by Microsoft Corp. and RealNetworks Inc., analysts say.
"We estimate about 14 percent of all streaming servers in deployment in '05 are Flash servers," Paul Palumbo, research director of AccuStream iMedia Research, told Ziff Davis Media in an e-mail.
Read details here about improvements to Macromedia's Studio 8.
What makes this new Flash server stand out from those of competitors?
"What we're hearing from the CDNs [content delivery networks] is that there are two differences: One, the codec provides a much better image quality and is less bandwidth-intensive than prior versions, and two, there are now authentication and DRM solutions available for Flash streaming," Palumbo said.
"Streaming media is a high-growth segment, and in particular, streaming advertising is growing rapidly and being adopted by big brand advertisers. A lot of those streaming ads are being delivered in Flash this year," Palumbo said.
Flash Media Server 2 is used in conjunction with Macromedia's Flash Professional 8 development software and Flash Player 8 to comprise the company's Flash Platform, which developers use to create rich-media applications that run on browsers and operating systems of all kinds.
The new server also includes the new, scalable Edge-Origin servers, an optional enterprise-ready architecture that simplifies load balancing, failover, and clustering to ensure greater reliability and scalability of streaming rich interactive experiences even during peak traffic times, the company said.
Macromedia Flash Media Server 2 is available now, and pricing is based on configuration and number of licenses. Prices start at $4,500 for a two-CPU configuration Professional Edition license.
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