Good morning, dear readers:

Our little OSMF continues to mature at a rapid pace. The most recent announcement is the release of Flash Media Playback and Strobe Media Playback.

One item that's made it a bit more difficult for some users to work with OSMF is that it comes with no GUI components (such as the FLVPlayback component in Flash). That means you have to code up your own video player interfaces if you want to work with OSMF.

Well, not anymore. Flash Media Playback (FMP) and Strobe Media Playback (SMP) are two ways that you can work with pre-packaged Flash GUIs build on OSMF.

From the docs:

Flash Media Playback is an out-of-the-box, feature-rich, free media player suitable for designers, content owners, IT professionals, and developers. It is designed to be your simplest deployment solution. You use a setup assistant to configure the player with a few mouse clicks. Because Adobe hosts the player for you, there’s nothing for you to install or keep updated. And users experience fast downloads, because the player is stored in their Flash cache.

Strobe Media Playback provides more flexibility than Flash Media Playback, while still helping you get up and running quickly. Like Flash Media Playback, the Strobe Media Playback player is both free and easy to customize. Unlike Flash Media Playback, the Strobe Media Playback player is open source, available both as a compiled SWF file and as uncompiled source code. And, because it is a download, it can be deployed behind firewalls, where the Flash Media Playback player cannot.

So, FMP is pre-compiled, hosted by Adobe, and easy to configure and embed in your websites.

SMP is an open-source OSMF-based player, that you can use as-is, or open, edit, customize and re-deploy on your own websites.

I will be teaching how to skin SMP in detail in my Bring-Your-Own-Laptop session at MAX, 'Designing Custom Video Players with OSMF' (you can browse the catalog of talks and presentations and then you can register here).

Share and enjoy!

-r