What is VOD all about?
To understand VOD, let’s take a minute and step back to understand some fundamentals about using Flash Media Server 3.5. Earlier iterations of Flash Media Server (FMS) were not exactly one of those things you’d categorize as “really easy to learn.” In fact, many people who approached Flash Media Server 2 for the first time found that the learning curve was steep, to put it mildly. You couldn’t simply install the server, launch Flash authoring, generate an FLV file, and get into the streaming game. No way, no how. Here’s the fascinating thing about Flash Media Server 3.5: that’s exactly what you now do. To understand what I’m getting at, you need to clearly comprehend the fact that Flash Media Server 3.5 uses a client-server architecture, in which Adobe Flash is the client and FMS is the server. For this to work right, though, you have to rethink your workflow slightly. Instead of putting your video files in a folder on your web server—the familiar progressive download model—you put the
