Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Adobe upgrades, changes name of rich media content controller

news
Sep 10, 20092 mins

Flash Access can control permissions for downloaded Flash content

Adobe Systems is renaming Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server, which controls access to streams of rich media content,  to Adobe Flash Access and adding capabilities to control downloaded Flash content.

Adobe Flash Access 2.0 is being introduced on Thursday at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam.  Through the application of document protection capabilities previously used in Adobe Acrobat documents, Flash Access can enable content owners to set permissions for access or limit copying of multimedia content.  Flash Access is due to ship early next year.

[ For more Adobe news, see also “Adobe acquires Web platform builder.” | Also expected at IBC: Microsoft will show off planned capabilities for its Silverlight 4 RIA technology. ]

“We can protect downloaded content so you can have the file on our hard drive instead of just streaming it. But that file can be restricted by the publisher so that the user can be limited in the number of copies they can make,” said Mark Randall, chief strategist for the dynamic media organization at Adobe.

Flash Media Rights Management Server has been used for showing content such as sports, TV shows, and movies.  “It’s a cross-section of the video content you find on the Web, most of t being professional content,” Randall said. But the technology also can be used to control sensitive content inside the enterprise, such as a human resources video or an advertising campaign, he said.

“You can now secure that video in an enterprise scenario,” said Randall.

Adobe changed the name of the product because the previous name was too unwieldy and the upgrade is substantial, according to Randall.

Adobe at the conference also will show a screen-writing tool, Adobe Story, for writing searchable scripts for video and multimedia productions. A beta version will be available on Adobe Labs, with general release planned for next year.

“Now you can have the entire script as searchable content,” in any search engine, Randall said. Metadata is captured from scripts.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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