What's New in Adobe AIR 3

Chapter 5. Video and Audio Enhancements

Adobe AIR has always supported the decoding and playback of industry standard H.264 alongside other codecs such as VP6 and Spark. With AIR 3, developers now have the ability to encode captured video to H.264 in the runtime itself, opening up a lot more possibilities for video capture and distribution applications for the desktop. Along with H.264 encoding, we also get another audio codec to work with in the form of G.711.

H.264/AVC Software Encoding

With AIR 3, developers now have the ability to encode H.264 video streams within the runtime itself. Prior versions of AIR were able to decode H.264 and with the additional encoding functionality, a whole other set of applications can be built to record and broadcast in this industry standard format.

Warning

H.264/AVC software encoding is only available on the desktop. Mobile devices cannot utilize this feature due to the amount of CPU it takes to encode the streams.

To compile and run the examples included below effectively, it is recommended that you install Flash Media Server.

Note

Note that if you do not have access to a commercial license for Flash Media Server, Adobe does offer a free developer edition with which you can test this and other examples. When doing any serious work through FMS, it is encouraged that you begin with a local development instance such as this.

Flash Media Server developer edition can be acquired from Adobe via http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/

Warning

Flash Media ...