AVChat Software Product Blog

2009 has been a great year for us, we’ve learned a lot and we’ve made big progress as a company and we feel 2010 is going to be even better. Everybody is back now from their NYE vacation (support should be again up to speed) and we’re deciding on directions to follow in 2010 with our business and products. Here are some of them:

AVChat Instant Messenger is a new product we’re working on. We have a lot of great ideas for it, hopefully we will have something to show in March.

Each product will have it’s own website. We’ve already started doing that with HDFVR and soon the Flash Audio Recorder will also be moved to its own website. AVChat 3 will follow. This will allow us to provide more accurate and on topic  info on each product and also independently measure the interest for each product.

We’re going to offer better support trough a new forum and more support articles. Many of the supports requests we get are answered with information that would be useful for everyone, not just the person asking for support so we’re going to build a forum (where our team can answer questions) and encourage everyone to post their questions there. Personalized support by email will still be available.

We’re going to support the Wowza media server across all our products. HDFVR was our first product that worked on the Wowza media server. Wowza versions of our Flash Audio Recorder and AVChat 3 are ready we just need to launch them!

AVChat 3 updates. We have a few great features we want to add in the rooms management and users list department. There is also a long list of requested features we’re going to go trough. Support for the new YouTube AS3 API should be available soon, this will mean people will be able to post more than 1 YT video in the video chat.

Better and more  integrations. The AVChat 3 Module for phpFox 2 is almost ready (should be online in a few days), vBulletin 4 was just released and Joomla 1.6 is just around the corner. Expect many improvements in the integrations department and maybe some integrations for our other products like the HD Flash Video Recorder.

More blogging. Time allowing it we’re going to post more articles, web cam reviews, guides etc… .Good useful content on this blog is rather scarce (well, except for the tutorials/documentation articles) so we’re going to improve that.

This should keep us busy for the next 6 months. We’re having even bigger plans for the second half of the year! If you have any other ideas you can always drop us a line at contact@avchat.net, feedback is always welcomed here !

I am pleased to announce you the immediate availability of our new flagship product: AVChat 3, the successor to AVChat 2.

Launch AVChat 3.0 Demo

View Some More Screenshots

New Technology

AVChat 3 is developed using ActionScript 3. This allows us to develop much more powerful and fast applications than before.

New Features

We’ve listened to our vocal clients and added a lot of requested features like private video streams and emote icon packs but we’ve also added a lot of new stuff we’ve thought about internally. Users will now be able to join  multiple rooms at the same time, they will be able to share YouTube movies, upload pictures to rooms, watch video streams in full screen and much more.

Webmasters and site admins have not been forgotten either, the dynamic reduction in bandwidth feature will save a lot of bandwidth on the media server, the rooms management has been rethinked and room creation is much more easier, you now have access to a lot of information about each user and the media server including total bandwidth usage.

Check out a more complete list of AVChat 3 features on the Features Tour page.

Media Server Support

AVChat 3 is now available for Flash Media Interactive Server, but support for Red5, Wowza and rtmpd will be rolled out in the following weeks.

Pricing & Upgrading from AVChat 2

Previous AVChat 2 clients

Clients who have purchased AVChat 2 within the last 3 months (starting 9 March 09), will get a free upgrade to AVChat 3.

These are the upgrade prices for clients who have purchased AVChat 2 prior to 9 March 2009 :

• Upgrade from AVChat 2.x Lite to AVChat 3.x Lite: $47.5
• AVChat 2.x 40 to AVChat 3.x 40: $87.5
• AVChat 2.x 100 to AVChat 3.x: $127.5
• AVChat 2.x Unlimited to AVChat 3.x Unlimited: $199.5

You can order your upgrade from the pricing/purchase page!

New clients

• AVChat 3.x Lite (20 simultaneous users max ): $95
• AVChat 3.x with 40 simultaneous users max: $135
• AVChat 3.x with 100 simultaneous users max: $255
• AVChat 3.x with 200 simultaneous users max: $399
• AVChat 3.x with 500 simultaneous users max: $799
• AVChat 3.x with Unlimited simultaneous users: $1249

More details on the pricing/purchase page!

Pricing for integration modules/plugins/components

We have decided to charge separately for integration modules, plugins and components because a surprising amount of work goes into developing, maintaining and supporting these extensions.

Right now we offer integration kits for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5, Drupal 5 and 6 and osDate. Kits for Social Engine and vldPersonals will soon follow. Each of them will be priced at $49 and will be available when you purchase the standalone version of AVChat 3.

What happens with AVChat 2?

We will continue to sell and support it as we have until now. No major features will be added tough, updates will include mostly bug fixing and support for new Red5/FMS versions.

You can now follow us on Twitter:

@avchathq
http://www.twitter.com/avchathq

We will use the Twitter account to announce what we’re working on, new major and minor releases, news from the industry, etc… .

Also did I say we are working on AVChat 3 for a while and its almost ready!?

We have silently rolled out an update for our flash video recorder and player .

Here are the changes in the 1.1 version:

• 4 Java Script hooks added, one for each button in the recorder (more on this later)
• all strings can now be translated from the external en/videorecorder_en.xml
• userId variable was added in the settings file and it can also be passed via flash vars,the userId is passed back later to save_video_to_db.XXX
• 3 vars are now sent via GET to save_video_to_db.XXX, streamName, streamDuration and userId
• Flash Player detection code
• The name of the file to be played by the player can now be specified via both the avc_settings.XXX and via flash vars using the streamName variable

Bugs solved:

• sometimes the [save] button enabled itself up after saving the movie

If you have purchased the AVRecorder 1.0 bundle in the past, just drop us an email and we will send you the updated version!

AVChat 2.1 and AVConference 1.1 are now fully compatible with the free open source Red5 media server. Absolutely all the features in both softwares are implemented in the new Red5 versions.

Red5 is a free, open source, Java based, alternative to Adobe’s Flash Media Server. Altough the server is in pre-alpha there are many production-ready applications that work on Red5 and many have chosen to use Red5 because its free and open source.

To install Red5 you need a dedicated server. You can not install Red5 on a shared hosting plan. Red5 is available for both Windows and Linux. You can find more info about it here:http://osflash.org/red5

Until now AVChat 2 and AVConference worked only with Adobe’s Flash Media Server.

To purchase AVChat 2 or AVConference on Red5 email us after the purchase and let us know you want the Red5 version.

If you have already purchased AVChat 2 or AVConference email us and we will send you the proper Red5 files for your licensed domain.

All tutorials and support material on the website will now be updated to include Red5 specific info.

We’ve got a lot of emails on these topics recently so we decided to clarify the issue here.

Adobe announced support for h.264 video in Flash Player in August 2007 in this press release.

Adobe announced Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Media Encoder 2 in September 2007 in this press release.

Prerecorded h.264 video

Right now the latest Flash Player Beta Update available on Adobe Labs only supports playing/decoding of prerecorded video files encoded with h.264 and delivered using progressive download.

To deliver prerecorded h.264 video files to Flash Player applications (video players, etc…) using streaming we need to wait for Flash Media Server 3 due to be released in Spring 2008.

Flash Media Server 2 can only stream prerecorded .flv files encoded with ON2’s VP6 or with Sorenson Spark.

Live h.264 video

FME2-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

To deliver live h.264 video to Flash Player Applications (live video players, AVChat, etc…) we need to wait for Flash Media Encoder 2 and Flash Media Server 3 to be released. At that time we will be able to push live h.264 video feeds from FME2 to Flash Player Apps via FMS3.

Flash Player apps-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

If Flash Player will ever support encoding live video with h.264, then we will be able to deliver live h.264 video feeds from Flash Player applications (video chat software, etc.) to Flash Player apps (video players, etc.) using FMS3 as a streaming server!

Right now Flash Player can only encode live video using the older Sorenson Spark (h.263) video codec.

As of today AVChat 1.3 is also being sold on a per connection basis. The 3 new types of licenses above will fill the gap in our offer created by demand from web sites/applications who do not need to connect together large numbers of users.

We hope this is great news for all of you and you can always email us at contact@avchat.net and tell us what you think.

All 4 types of licenses are still accompanied by great support and service with which we hope we have used you to.

You can always upgrade to an upper level license by paying the difference. The original license, now labeled “AVChat Unlimited” remains at the same price. All previous licenses sold are considered to be “AVChat Unlimited”.

Click here to visit the purchase page

Click here to view the demo page

We want everyone to know that the new version of AVChat, 1.3 is in development here at AVChat Software.

This update will include several features that were requested a lot by our users : limited video time for free users and background color change among others, and a lot of updates on the current features: faster video stream start, error screen, cache buster for the settings files, reconfigured language file, etc. .

We will let anyone know about the status of this update and when it’s ready. We hope to have it done by 1 May 2006, but don’t bet on that, it could take longer.

All previous buyers will be updated for free to this new version when it becomes available.