Adobe FMS (Flash Media Streaming Server) is a Great Platform for Streaming Videos

We have been using Adobe FMS (Flash Media Streaming Server) since January and have been very happy with it. It is very easy software to install and use, and so far has not crashed or caused us any problems.

If you want to provide real Video streaming for your sites visitors all you do is install Adobe FMS, upload your video into the /VOD/ folder, and then point your Flash Video player to your server’s /VOD/ folder (www.YOURSERVER.com/VOD/video.flv)

The benefits of using a real streaming server is that your visitors can jump around to any place in a video, you use far less bandwidth to provide videos, and there are numerous logging functions so that you can see how your videos are being used.

The standard Adobe FMS costs approx. $1000, BUT they have a developer version that limits you to 10 streams for FREE. The developer version will suit most small sites.

You can install Adobe FMS on either Red Hat Linux or Windows server. We installed it on Windows 2008 Server Web Edition for around $300. It’s worked like a champ and we haven’t had any problems.

You can check out Adobe FMS at: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediastreaming/