Finally, Flash Media Server 3 is shipping.

Flash Media Server 3 is available into two editions.

Flash Media Interactive Server 3:

This edition is traditional media server edition like we had in version 2. i.e. you can use this edition to do realtime audio, video and data sharing application. It includes all the features that is require to make collaboration applications.

Price:

Price for this edition is US$ 4,500 if you are buying it as a new product. If you want to upgrade it from previous version of flash media server, than it will cost you US$ 1,995. Ofcourse, 10 connection limited Developer edition is free.

What’s New:

  • Support For H.264 and HE-AAC for Flash Player, AIR, Adobe Media Player and FlashLite 3
  • Performance Gain - According to Adobe, its 2x than FMS 2.
  • Secured content delivery through RTMPE with 128-bit encryption
  • New plug-in architecture
  • AMF3 Support - Now all binary data transportation is through AMF3 protocol
  • Multipoint Publishing - Publish live stream from different network locations for time-sensitive content.
  • Stream redirection handling - You can redirect streams like HTTP 302 for missing / alternative contents.
  • Stream data access - Dynamic creation of thumbnails or video previews / snapshots
  • W3C compliant ASCII logs
  • Native bandwidth detection - Detect the bandwidth and serve accordingly
  • Advanced seeking - Seek anywhere regardless of length of video or download status

Flash Media Streaming Server 3:

This edition is a special edition if you just want to have flash platform’s streaming power for audio and video but not the data related features or any other interactive features of FMS. So you can say that it’s limited edition of Flash Media Interactive Server. If we compare this edition with FMS2, than the major feature of this edition is no connections or bandwidth limits. I am sure all the CDNs and Flash Media Server hosting companies must be very happy of this. Personally I also see this as strict step against Wowza Media Server by Adobe.

Price:

Price for this edition is US$ 995. Due to this pricing Wowza had to reduce its price to 80%. Unfortunately there is no upgrade option for this edition if you own any previous version of flash media server.

What’s New:

  • Unlimited Bandwidth and Users - No limits :) Serve as much your hardware can
  • Performance Gain - According to Adobe, its 2x than FMS 2.
  • Secured content delivery through RTMPE with 128-bit encryption
  • Support For H.264 and HE-AAC for Flash Player, AIR, Adobe Media Player and FlashLite 3
  • W3C compliant ASCII logs
  • Native bandwidth detection - Detect the bandwidth and serve accordingly
  • Advanced seeking - Seek anywhere regardless of length of video or download status

Download Link:

Flash Media Interactive Server 3 - Developer Edition

So that’s good news for flash media server developers. But unfortunately no Screensharing support yet from Adobe to create great collaborative applications like Acrobat Connect Pro.