are there any step-by-step tutorials on setting up an fms2 server to stream an
on-demand FLV clip, especially geared towards someone who has no experience
with actionscript or flash but plenty of experience setting up streaming media
servers?

On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 02:04:06 +0000 (UTC), "edarap"
[quoted text, click to view]

The easiest way to do this without fiddling is to use Dreamweaver MX
or 8. Load your web page in Dreamweaver and through the menu you can
add your flash video. The interface will let you set the URL to your
flash server and video and you can choose from several control
interfaces, size, etc., and after you're done it will write the code
and build the files. After that just upload them to your web server.

no response in a week.

i suspect perhaps i misunderstood what FMS2 does. is it only an application
server for video chat and shared bouncing balls?

is there some other software server that is designed to stream FLV files?

according to all my research and sleuthing in the last week, FMS2 does _not_
have the capability to stream FLV files out of the box the way winmedia, real
or quicktime can. you can use progressive download from a web server or turn
to third party flash applications, neither of which are acceptible for my use.

either way, it is a waste of $4500 (plus the $500 tech support call), both of
which macromedia acquiesced to refund after much bad noise.

if we ever need a shared bouncing ball application, i know where to look.

Well, I guess it could be looked at a couple of ways. with Win, real, and
quicktime, you can stream "right out of the box", but you don't get the same
sort of flexibility you do with FMS.

With Flash and FMS you don't have the same limitations the other formats have.
The big difference is having the flexibility Flash environment to work with. Of
course, that's absolutely meaningless to anyone who just wants to stream video
in a square box with no interaction, but if you want to do things like
synchronize video with other content, mask video to a specifc shape, control
data based on playhead time, share data amongst connected users, consume
webservices on the server side, and allow your users to record video without
downloading anything... FMS wins hands down.

Then there's the issue of market penetration for the various media players.
Windows doesn't ship with quicktime, Mac doesn't ship with WMP, and
realplayer... well... realplayer just sort of sucks in terms of quality.

As for the price comparisons, it's really apples and oranges. None of the
others have the data handling and user recording capabilites like FMS does.

In the end, I guess it's really a matter of what you need to accomplish with
your server software.

the deeper features available are compelling ~ i played with some of the sample
chat systems and other samples i found online ~ good stuff. no argument of its
value if you want interapplication communication.

however, if you just want to stream video files, it's apparently worthless.