Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allowed streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.
SWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function. They may also occur in programs, commonly browser games, using ActionScript.
A rich web application is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a single-page application, and may allow the user interactive features such as drag and drop, background menu, WYSIWYG editing, etc. The concept was first introduced in 2002 by Macromedia to describe Macromedia Flash MX product. Throughout 2000-s, the term was generalized to describe web applications developed with other competing browser plugin technologies including Java applets, Microsoft Silverlight.
Adobe Flash Player is computer software for content created on the Adobe Flash platform. Flash Player is capable of viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video. In addition, Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed and distributed by Adobe Systems since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. Flash Player is distributed as freeware. With the exception of the China-specific and enterprise supported variants, e.g. Firefox ESR supports until November 2021. Flash Player was discontinued on December 31, 2020 and its download page disappeared two days later. Since January 12, 2021, Flash Player versions newer than 32.0.0.371 refuse to play Flash content and instead display a static warning message.
Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content. Flash Lite operates on devices that Flash Player cannot, such as mobile phones and other portable electronic devices like Wii, Chumby and Iriver.
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.
Gnash is a media player for playing SWF files. Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded devices, as well as a plugin for several browsers. It is part of the GNU Project and is a free and open-source alternative to Adobe Flash Player. It was developed from the gameswf project.
Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) is a communication protocol for streaming audio, video and data over the Internet. Originally developed as a proprietary protocol by Macromedia for streaming between a Flash player and a server, Adobe has released an incomplete version of the specification of the protocol for public use.
Adobe Director was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation.
Action Message Format (AMF) is a binary format used to serialize object graphs such as ActionScript objects and XML, or send messages between an Adobe Flash client and a remote service, usually a Flash Media Server or third party alternatives. The Actionscript 3 language provides classes for encoding and decoding from the AMF format.
Asao is a proprietary single-channel (mono) codec and compression format optimized for low-bitrate transmission of audio, developed by Nellymoser Inc.
The Secure Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) is a protocol suite developed by Adobe Systems for encrypted, efficient multimedia delivery through both client-server and peer-to-peer models over the Internet. The protocol was originally proprietary, but was later opened up and is now published as RFC 7016.
Flash Media Live Encoder (FMLE) was a free live encoding software product from Adobe Systems. It was available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
RTMPDump is a free software project dedicated to develop a toolkit for RTMP streams. The package includes three programs, rtmpdump, rtmpsrv and rtmpsuck.
The Helix Universal Media Server was a product developed by RealNetworks and originates from the first streaming media server originally developed by Progressive Networks in 1994. It supported a variety of streaming media delivery transports including MPEG-DASH RTMP (flash), RTSP (standard), HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Silverlight and HTTP Progressive Download enabling mobile phone OS and PC OS media client delivery.
Wowza Streaming Engine is a unified streaming media server software developed by Wowza Media Systems. The server is used for streaming of live and on-demand video, audio, and rich Internet applications over IP networks to desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, mobile devices, IPTV set-top boxes, internet-connected TV sets, game consoles, and other network-connected devices. The server is a Java application deployable on most operating systems.
Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. The company first announced its codec at a developer’s preview at MacWorld Expo in January 1997.
Unreal Media Server is a streaming server software created by Unreal Streaming Technologies.
Red5 is a free software media streaming server implemented in Java, which provides services similar to those offered by the proprietary Adobe Flash Media Server and Wowza Streaming Engine including:
Web Call Server is unified intermedia server software developed by Flashphoner. It is a server-side platform, implemented in Java, dedicated for streaming video over wide range of communication protocols, including:
