Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - Adobe Confirms Support for HTTP Streaming

Written by Ryan Lawler

Monday, October 5. 2009 at 12:10 PM EDT 7 comments

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With the next version of its Flash Player client, Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) says it will finally allow media companies and service providers to stream Flash video without using its proprietary streaming protocol.

The company announced at MAX today that Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will support all the same live, on-demand, adaptive bit-rate, and DVR-like capabilities through HTTP that Adobe has built out to work with RTMP, its proprietary streaming protocol.

The release of Flash Player 10.1 is scheduled for the first half of 2010, and will coincide with the release of Adobe's Flash Access 2.0 digtal rights management (DRM) platform, allowing media companies to protect their video with stream encryption and SWF verification.

In August, we reported that Adobe would support HTTP streaming early next year. But that story assumed that the support will be built into the next version of Adobe's Flash Media Server (FMS). But rather than support HTTP streaming on the server side, Adobe is enabling the technology on the client side.

By opening up its client to support HTTP streaming, content delivery networks (CDNs) and media companies that want to deliver video via Flash will no longer need to use RTMP or FMS. Instead, they will be able to serve that video from standard HTTP Web servers.

That's good for the industry, because it will allow service providers to stream video using the same infrastructures they've built out to deliver static Web objects and other files that are delivered via HTTP. Unlike RTMP, video served in HTTP can be stored in an edge location and "streamed" from the cache, rather than have each concurrent instance require a connection to the server itself.

HTTP streaming has been a hot topic lately, particularly as online video files get larger and viewer engagement times get longer. CDNs like Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM) say HTTP is necessary to reach the scale needed to deliver the amount of high-quality video that online viewers demand.

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) cited scalability as one reason it chose to use HTTP video delivery for its Silverlight Smooth Streaming capabilities. And Akamai recently announced its HTTP-based "HD Network," developing its own workaround to enable Flash streaming via HTTP, without Adobe's help.

Tags: Adobe, Akamai, Business, Flash, HTTP, Microsoft, Silverlight, Streaming Video, Technology, Video, Video-on-Demand (VOD)

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Adobe still doesn't get the enterprise
Scott R.
Rank: Pasha
Tuesday October 6, 2009 3:30:41 PM

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Nice to see HTTP streaming support, helps reduce the streaming infrastructure necessary in enterprise organizations. However, Adobe still doesn't get the enterprise issue - which is the need to multicast. Without multicast support, Flash will not be used for live as it consumes to much bandwidth.

Microsoft on the other hand does. Silverlight supports multicast, along with smooth streaming (HTTP streaming).

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Interesting
RossMoran
Rank: Pasha
Wednesday October 7, 2009 9:54:01 AM

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I assume this means to get Adaptive Streaming with Adobe you will need to either use FMS or a CDN based adaitive streaming scheme? I guess this is a move to allow Adobe to compete with Microsoft for Akamai customers.

This is a great move for folks who want to take advantage of the FLV player footprint without added cost. Not sure how it helps Adobe unless they plan to make thier money on selling their authoring tools and thier upcoming DRM.

Do you think Enhanced Seek and Adaptive Streaming is how teh FMS will compete or will Adobe drop FMS support?

- Ross

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Re: Adobe still doesn't get the enterprise
Ryan Lawler
Staff
Wednesday October 7, 2009 10:03:17 AM

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Scott - Funny you should say that. One of the things Ashley Still talked about when I was briefed on the support for HTTP streaming was continued development of FMS, RTMP, and other protocols. One thing she mentioned Adobe would be previewing at Max was a version of RTMP that supported multicast, but there's no date set for when it will be available.

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Re: Interesting
Ryan Lawler
Staff
Wednesday October 7, 2009 10:04:46 AM

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Ross - To my knowledge, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will support all the same features under HTTP that it supports through FMS, including adaptive bit-rate streaming and DVR functionality.

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Re: Interesting
gsoks22
Rank: Pasha
Wednesday October 7, 2009 11:21:43 AM

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Thanks Ryan. The Adobe Labs site indicates that Dynamic Streaming enhancements would require 3.5.3 server which would use their Real Time Messaging Protocol right?

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Re: Interesting
Ryan Lawler
Staff
Wednesday October 7, 2009 11:25:32 AM

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At this point, yes. But I'm pretty sure that changes with the release of Flash Player 10.1, but that's not due out until early next year. I've forwarded the questions along to Adobe PR, hopefully someone from the company will clear up any confusion.

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HTTP Services on Blu-Ray
ConfusedbyDigitalMedia
Rank: Pasha
Tuesday October 13, 2009 7:47:52 AM

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I am a little confused and frustrated by my new LG Blu-Ray Player and the online video services it contains. You Tube: fun, free, but the quality is really bad, lots of blockiness, and it stops to buffer often painful NetFlix: Free for 2 two weeks – Not sure I will continue when I have to pay. Again the quality is bad, it is blocky, it takes a long time to start, when I fast forward it is weird and then it buffers for 30 seconds to a minute. Then some times the video stops and has to buffer because it is “adjusting quality” and then it gets Blocky...Frustrating is how I feel about NetFlix. CinemaNow: This is a good quality but the problem is I have to pay for videos. In fact I would say the quality is great it is better than DVD and my Comcast service. I notice that it starts up fast and I never had it “buffer” and I have never seen it “adjust quality” picture is crisp. It would be great if this had free content or subscription like Netflix. Vudu: Again expensive. The picture quality is great but the video constantly stops to buffer. I was unable to watch a single movie too painful. I assume all these services use HTTP (ergo buffering) like Adobe plans to do. Why do most of these have buffering problems I thought all of these service have dynamic bitrate? Why is CinemaNow so much better does it use Adobe and FMS? Are some adaptive streaming better than others? Can you clear this up?

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