A few months ago, I was introduced to the concept of Adobe “Strobe” and quite honestly I was a bit confused on the reasoning behind the project. The confusion was built up due to Adobe’s efforts on the Open Video Player project and Strobe project. The two similar projects had intentions on standardizing the market’s video players. So why two?

With the release of new documentation on Adobe “Strobe”, I can now say that the confusion I once had is now gone and I can’t wait for the official release of Adobe “Strobe”. While these two projects are similar, they both serve two different purposes and look to standardize those efforts. Actually, the Open Video Player initiative will aid the development and standardization of the Adobe “Strobe” project as it leverages code from the Akamai’s Open Video Player.

More About Adobe “Strobe”, Now Called Open Source Media Framework

Late last month, Adobe announced that Adobe “Strobe” is going open source and being renamed to Open Source Media Framework. This is great news and indicates the extent of the efforts on this project. Once again, I have to say to thank you to Adobe and its partners for contributing their efforts to a great cause.

So what is the Open Source Media Framework

Now that the confusion is out of the way,let’s talk about what this framework will be able to do. Adobe’s new media player framework simplifies the development of media players by enabling developers to assemble pluggable components, creating high-quality, full-featured playback experiences. Its open framework enables collaborative development for future web video monetization, with lower costs and faster turnaround. To learn more, visit the home of this new Open Source Media Framework.

Features (To name a few):

• An Open and standard framework
• An open plug-in architecture
• Drag and drop component architecture
• Flash Media Server integration/support
• Content delivery network integration
• Skinnable
• Custom measurement/analytical reporting
• Many more…

Video: The Adobe Ones Answer Some Questions

Additional Resources:

• Download the latest version of the Open Source Media Framework
• Intro to Open Source Media Framework
• Planned plug-in providers

Loading content into mid to large scale Flash projects can be somewhat of painful process. From managing complex loading scenarios to behind the scenes preloading, if not done correctly, performance can really take a hit at the expense of preloading.

Before you know it, you have spent a lot more time than expected managing the loading of a project’s content. A very handy solution to this madness is BulkLoader created by Albert Debert.

What is BulkLoader?

BulkLoader is a minimal library written in ActionScript 3.0 that aims to make loading and managing complex loading requirements easier and faster. BulkLoader takes a more dynamic, less architecture heavy approach. Few imports and making heavy use of AS3′s dynamic capabilities, BulkLoader has a one-liner feel that doesn’t get in your way.

Using Bulkloader in your Flash projects allows you a powerful yet easy approach to taking control of when and how your content is being loading.  Once you’ve gotten a taste of BulkLoader, you’ll wonder how you’d ever get by without it.  Thankfully, the BulkLoader library is licensed under an open source MIT license and is currently hosted at Google Code.

It’s features include:

• Connection pooling.
• Unified interface for different loading types.
• Unified progress notification.
• Events for individual items and as groups.
• Priority loading
• Stop and resuming individually as well as in bulk.
• Cache management.
• Statistics about loading (latency, speed, average speed).
• Various kinds on progress indication: ratio (items loaded / items to load), bytes , and weighted percentage.
• Configurable number of retries.
• Configurable logging.
• Various asset types (XML, NetStreams, Swfs, Images, Sound, Text Files)

Additional Resources:

• Download BulkLoader
• Getting Started
• Developer Guide

FX Video is an open source video player built with Flex. The FX Video control lets you play an FLV file in a Flex application. It also supports progressive download over HTTP, streaming from the Flash Media Server, and streaming from a Camera object.

Download FX Video