What is Flash Media Server?
Welcome to our description of what Flash Media Server is. Being that a lot of our products are built on FMS and we do extensive development and consulting with it, it's fair to say that we can probably write a good description. You may also be interested in what Wowza Media Server is, we've got an article for that too.
Flash Media Server has three versions but no matter which version you are using you can be assured that it's base functionality of streaming live and VOD video/audio works very well and is a powerful tool to have in the toolbox to deliver. This piece of software that is installed on a server machine is used most commonly to deliver video/audio files to the desktop. With the latest version 4.5, Adobe has added the ability to stream not only to Flash and HTML but also to iOS.
Of the three versions, Streaming, Interactive and Enterprise, the most basic is Streaming. This version of FMS provides that base functionality of streaming video/audio content out to many devices. When you move up to the Interactive version you can now take advantage of a large amount of functionality like live data push/pull, peer to peer communication and server side coding which in turn allows you to add real power to live applications. This may include but is by far not a definitive list, live text chat, control of video/audio, database integration, integration into a backend system, enhanced and custom security, record video and audio and many more features. The Enterprise version reduces the limitations put in place for the amount of peer to peer connections and adds a few more features. Check out the comparison here.
Bottom line though is that you can use this software to stream out live/vod video/audio, build video/audio and text chat and conference applications, record video and audio and put together just about any kind of application you can imagine that takes advantage of live communication between two or more client side applications. The inclusion of peer to peer introduction, HTTP dynamic streaming and now HLS for iOS has made Flash Media Server a truly powerful tool that you can take advantage to build really cool and useful interactive applications both on the desktop and in mobile.
To learn even more about Flash Media Server, please check out Adobe's website FMS page.
The products that we have on hand to demonstrate the functionality of Flash Media Server can be located here: