Chapter 3: Developing Media Applications; Connecting To The Server - Adobe 65029121 - Flash Media Streaming Server Developer's Manual

ADOBE FLASH MEDIA SERVER 16
Developer Guide

Chapter 3: Developing media applications

Video applications for Adobe® Flash® Media Interactive Server can be video on demand or live video applications.
Video on demand applications stream recorded video from the server, such as television shows, commercials, or
user-created video stored on the server. An organization may have a large archive of videos or be producing new
videos regularly. The videos can be short clips (0–30 seconds), long clips (30 seconds to 5 minutes), or very long clips
(5 minutes to hours long).
Live video applications stream live video from the server to users, or from one user to the server and then on to other
users. Live video is typically used for live events, such as corporate meetings, education, sports events, and concerts,
or delivered continually, for example, by a television or radio station. You can use Adobe Flash Media Encoder,
available from Adobe.com, to encode and stream live video.

Connecting to the server

The NetConnection class
Before a client can play audio and video from Flash Media Server, it must connect to the server. The connection
request is accepted or rejected by an application instance on the server, and connection messages are sent back to the
client. Once the application accepts the connection request, a connection is available to both the client and the server.
The NetConnection class connects a client to an application instance on the server. In the simplest case, you can
connect by creating an instance of NetConnection and then calling the method with the URI to an appli-
connect()
cation instance:
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect("rtmp://localhost/HelloServer");
Streams handle the flow of audio, video, and data over a network connection. A NetConnection object is like a pipe
that streams audio, video, and data from client to server, or from server to client. Once you create the NetConnection
object, you can attach one or more streams to it.
A stream can carry more than one type of content (audio, video, and data). However, a stream flows in only one
direction, from server to client or client to server.
A B C D
Many streams can use one NetConnection object between client and server.
A. Flash Media Server B. Single stream of data C. NetConnection D. Flash Player, AIR, or Flash Lite 3 client
The application URI
The URI to the application can be absolute or relative and has the following syntax (items in brackets are optional):
protocol:[//host][:port]/appname/[instanceName]