I just wanted to quickly post up a few bug tracking links related to FMS in hopes that more will put in some votes to increase the importance of them. With any luck... they'll get resolved.
This one is the most important in my opinion (they've already got it in the connect addin):
Acoustic Echo cancellation support
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-273
Allow screensharing over RTMP
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1100
Byte access for netstream object
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-5
I'll update this list as more is brought to my attention.
So it's kind of been brought to my attention again about this issue of IE7 or 8 not letting go of SWFs when the browser is closed or the back button is clicked. So essentially the SWF should be unloaded from memory and destroyed but it stays.. I don't think this issue happens for any of those but FMS live (perhaps red5 and wowza too?) connections. So it's the socket connection that keeps IE thinking that it shouldn't let go of the SWF. I don't think it's a Flash player issue.
So how to fix it?
Well.. after a bunch of experimenting it's been established that the SWF no longer acts on it's own anymore. In other words, if it should be "doing something", it won't do it anymore. If you make a call from FMS to the client SWF that should be unloaded then it will react, but it won't do something, like call the server, on it's own.
Which leads to the workaround for this issue, which sucks really.. but has to be done for some apps that are based on paying for time online. Essentially you need to have the client side make a call to the server at a predetermined time. For example, once every 30 seconds. Then, the server receives this call and saves the call time in a variable on the client (or if you check out my tutes on fmsguru.com then you would probably be using a userManager and a users object). The application on the server side should then be checking every 45 seconds or so to see which clients are still checking in.
Now, the one issue with this is that there are times when the flash player may "forget" to make a call or two. So, give them a chance. Have the server set a "missed a call" variable on the user. Then check against that the next time. If it's true and they still haven't called in (this will be the second time), then you can be reasonably sure that they're not there anymore.
This is a bit of an intense way to deal with ghosts in your app, but should work rather well for all purposes intended. Hope that helps somebody out there as I'm sure there are those that have yet to find the solution to this until MS deals with their crappy browser issues.
Just wanted to let everybody know that another FMS video tutorial has gone up. This time I cover the issue of chat flooding and how to control it on the server side. Pretty useful concept I think. Check out the list here.
Rather than regurgitate the same kind of info, I thought I'd toss a link up to InsideRIA's website. They have a great article talking about Adobe's Strobe framework.
We make a heck of a lot of different video players with all kinds of features and customizations so this is interesting to us. I think I may even go ahead and give it a shot with a rebuild of my hastily built FMSGuru.com video player for the video tutorials..
For more info (because for some reason the InsideRIA guy didn't bother putting links in):
Link to Adobe's press release on Strobe, and the Strobe main page.
A little bit late but thought it best to be consistent and post it up that FMS 3.5 has an update with a bunch of bug fixes to it. Lookin' good. You should probably give it a go if you are having any issues with crashing or memory issues. Remember to back up your old config files and applications. Go get it here:
Flash Media Server update page
Here's a usergroup post, being that I'm an FMS usergroup leader.
Adobe is offering a special benefit to members of FMS usergroup from now (and a bit before..) through May 31, 2009. To get the details of this special discount, members should contact me (Graeme Bull) by email [graeme AT solid-thinking.com] and you’ll receive a copy of the details. Or check out this page on the user groups site, which is much easier :)
I'm not keeping up on this blog lately and keep forgetting to post when a new tutorial is up on FMSGuru.com. So here is the latest:
The Basics of Working with FMLE and FMS
This tutorial talks about the basics of Flash Media Live Encoder and how to use it with Flash Media Interactive Server to record the video that is being sent out live to the server. The server side code that is taught enables that small record button at the bottom of FMLE to work. Handy! There is also a bit on the client side in Flash that shows how to make a very basic live video player in Actionscript 3.
The one before that was a couple of weeks back:
Introduction and Installation of Flash Media Server 3.5
This video tutorial talks about the newly released Flash Media Server 3.5 installation process. I cover the differences between the 3 versions that are out, installation and details on what is new with this release, primarily the new HTTP proxying and Apache server.
I hope they're useful :) Lots more to come in the near future. I've got more ideas than I can shake a virtual stick at.