adobe

Flash Media Encoder

For those of us the broadcast on Ustream TV, we now have the option to use Adobe’s Flash Media Encoder. I’m using version 2.5 at the moment. It gives the broadcaster more fine tune control of the stream than the Ustream broadcast console. My biggest tweak about it is that the stream must be stopped to make any changes to the settings. Other than that, it works nicely.

I did have some trouble with the “Timecode” option when I was messing around with it. In the docs it says you can’t enable it unless the video source has timecode abilities. This was not the case. As I was able to select the Timecode option. After that, I could not remove the option and the encoder would stop with an error. I tried reinstalling FME, to no avail. I finally remove the setup.xml file after removing FME and the next installation reset it back to the original configuration.

It would be helpful to at least be able to adjust the audio volume on the fly. Because, when using FME, all of the options are grayed out on the Ustream broadcast console. I did see that I can control my TV tuner card from within the FME, a pleasant surprise, as the Asus My Cinema hardly works outside it’s own software suite.

FME can also record in .flv locally, a nice touch when Ustream takes a shit. I see that version 3.0 is coming soon. I must give it a whirl when it’s available.

Update:

The FME really lags my TV tuner horribly, and it’s kind of unstable as it disconnects constantly, although it’s probably a Ustream problem. So, unless I’m recording, I’m not using it.