MaSSSoftech

Here we provide solutions for problems that you may encounter when using the HD Media Player.
Player SWF doesn’t load on page: You must have Flash Player 10 installed (you will probably have to close and reopen your browser to complete the installation), and you must provide a valid path to the SWF on your web server. If you are loading a SWF file that is NOT hosted on the same server as the page where it is being displayed, you must use a crossdomain.xml file in the root of the website that contains the SWF file (this is part of the Flash Player security model).

XML playlist doesn’t load in player: You must provide a valid path to your XML (using FlashVars, ActionScript, JavaScript, or the Component Inspector), and your XML can not contain errors (check all your media paths and use one of our default XML files to check your syntax). If you are loading a XML file that is NOT hosted on the same server as the page where it is being displayed, you must use a crossdomain.xml file in the root of the website that contains the XML file (this is part of the Flash Player security model).

Bandwidth detection doesn’t work: You must provide a valid path to your bandwidth test location (using a parameter in the XML or Component Inspector). Please refer to our “Automated Bandwidth Detection” tutorial for more information.

Fullscreen doesn’t work or player doesn’t resize correctly when exiting fullscreen: You must have Flash Player 10 installed (you will probably have to close and reopen your browser to complete the installation); you must be testing your SWF in a web page using a web browser (will not work on your desktop); and you must set the “allowfullscreen = true” in your embed code. If you have altered the size and/or location of any objects on the stage, you also have to modify a few lines of action script to account for the new layout. Please refer to our “Fullscreen Setup and Resizing” tutorial for more information.

JavaScript interaction doesn’t work: You must provide valid paths to all of your media files; you must define the “id & name” of your SWF in the embed code; you must test your SWF on a web server using a browser (i.e. will not work locally, swf must be embedded in a webpage, and the SWF can not be inside a form tag); and you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Please refer to our “JavaScript Interaction” tutorial for more information.

H264 (mpeg-4) files cannot be seeked before they are completely downloaded: The MOOV atom in your H264 files is located at the end of the file. To fix this problem you should re-encode the file using Adobe Media Encoder or QuickTime Pro. Alternatively, you could try using the QTIndexSwapper, but it may not work in all cases.

MP3 playback is too fast or too slow: Your MP3 contains variable bit rate encoding or unsupported sample frequencies (e.g. 48Khz). To fix this problem you should re-encode the track using constant bit rate encoding and a supported frequency (11, 22, 33, or 44 kHz), which can be done with iTunes.

Video duration/dimensions are wrong or progress bar/scrubbber doesn’t work: Your media file does not include metadata. To fix this problem you can manually define the duration using the “dur” attribute in node of the XML, or you can re-encode the file using Adobe Media Encoder (FLV & H264 files), QuickTime Pro (H264 files), or iTunes (MP3 files). Alternatively, you could try using the Buraks FLV Metadata Injector, but it may not work in all cases.

Progressive (http) FLV file doesn’t work: You must provide a valid path to your progressive media file. If you are using a relative path it must be relative to the location of the page where it is being used (not the location of the SWF). If you are using a Windows 2003 server (Microsoft IIS Server 6.0), make sure the FLV mime type has been added to the server (link to simple instructions).

Streaming (rtmp) file doesn’t work: You must use a supported server type (FMS 3.x, Wowza, or Red5); you must provide a valid path to your streaming media file (correct syntax based on file type); and you must use the correct ”instance” setting to help the player parse your rtmp path. Please refer to our “Working with a Flash Media Server” tutorial for more information.

3PAR InServ Storage Servers Maximize Storage Capacity
Back in 2004, Cvent, a provider of meeting and event management SaaS offerings, had outstripped the 1.2TB capacity of its SAN. Its fast growth and rapid acquisition of customers was threatening to overwhelm its storage capacity, and the IT staff was spending a lot of time troubleshooting performance problems and trying to find additional space on its database.

“We couldn’t even grow volumes. We had to play games on the SAN to find additional space on our database,” says Dwayne Sye, CIO of Cvent. “That was all time we weren’t able to spend helping our customers.”

So Sye and others on the IT staff began evaluating possible replacements for the system. They knew they needed not only more storage space but also much faster performance. At the same time, however, they were concerned that any significant upgrade was likely to be both complex and time-consuming—and being a small, fast-growing company, Cvent didn’t have endless IT resources to spend on a complicated storage implementation, so manageability and ease of use were key requirements for any new system.

After looking at three vendors’ SAN products, Cvent opted to go with 3PAR’s InServ S400 storage server (www.3par.com), which has two or four controller nodes, up to 32GB of data cache, up to 640 drives, and a top storage capacity of 300TB. It also features RAID levels 0, 10, and 50.

Making SANs Simple

A key selling point of the InServ server, says Sye, was its administrative interface. The interface was designed to make configuring and changing drives and setting up the virtual SAN as quick and easy as possible.
“While it’s not extremely complicated stuff—creating volumes, exporting them, resisting, optimizing—it can seem pretty complicated and time-consuming. So the ability to do that so easily [on the InServ], especially compared to our old SAN, was what really sold me,” he says.

3PAR’s interface hides some of the complexity of configuring and administering storage by automating details that don’t really need a human to do, such as application provisioning and array planning and mapping. That automation, and the easy-to-understand interface, has saved Cvent substantially in IT administrative time, according to Sye.

Performance has also been very satisfactory, says Sye: “Now we don’t have performance problems with the disk subsystems. We don’t have to experience long query times to the database server—no bottlenecks.”

Saving Time & Effort

For Cvent, the Virtual Copy and Remote Copy functions of the 3PAR InForm software suite that accompanies the InServ have proved useful in reducing administrative time and headaches

Virtual Copy is 3PAR’s version of a snapshot that provides a quicker method of backing up data than the traditional one of copying the entire set of data. Virtual Copy allows Cvent to take quick snapshots of the data to be backed up on an incremental basis, thus reducing overall backup time substantially.

“We used that when our backup window approached eight hours. By using Virtual Copy, we made it virtually instantaneous,” says Sye.

Remote Copy is a host-independent, array-based data mirroring solution. 3PAR Virtual Volumes are mirrored from one 3PAR InServ server to another. Remote Copy, which Cvent uses to back up its corporate data, has helped reduce the time to recover lost information from an average of two weeks to two hours.

The InForm Suite also includes 3PAR’s Thin Provisioning capability, which automatically manages applications’ storage needs with a just-in-time approach. This differs from the traditional method of allocating space, wherein an administrator assigns large blocks of unused storage to each application for it to use as needed but that no other application can use. By employing Thin Provisioning, Cvent has been able to reduce its new storage capacity purchases by an estimated 95%.

Moving To T-Class

Cvent today has more than 4,500 clients, compared to just 45 when it first bought an InServ in 2004. So far, the scalability of the S400s, plus the optimization technologies it leverages, have provided Cvent with ample storage space. But given the growth rate of the firm and the associated growth in storage, Sye is considering an upgrade to 3PAR’s newest server, the T-Class array.

A big part of the appeal of the T-Class, says Sye, is that it offers administrators the ability to change volumes from fat to thin on the fly. So past decisions to use traditional “fat” provisioning—allocating a set amount of storage per application—for a volume can be changed if the administrator sees the need.

“I could deploy everything as thin or fat and then see how the volume gets utilized to decide if I need to change it,” says Sye, noting that being able to make use of these new types of storage optimization capabilities has also changed his way of looking at storage in general.

Detecting the presence of malicious code is one thing, successfully eradicating it is entirely another.

According to AV-Comparatives.org’s recently released malware removal test evaluating the effectiveness of sixteen antivirus solutions, only a few were able to meet their criteria of not only removing the FakeAV, Vundo, Rustock and ZBot(Zeus) samples they were tested against, but also getting rid of the potentially dangerous “leftovers” from the infection.

More info on the tested antivirus solutions , and how they scored:


The test, including the following antivirus solutions - Avast Professional Edition 4.8; AVG Anti-Virus 8.5; AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0; BitDefender Anti-Virus 2010; eScan Anti-Virus 10.0; ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0; F-Secure AntiVirus 2010; G DATA AntiVirus 2010; Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010; Kingsoft AntiVirus 9; McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009; Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0; Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.10; Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6; Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2010; Trustport Antivirus 2009, relied on a modest malware sample, whose prevalence is however easily seen in the wild these days.

Their conclusion:

“None of the products performed “very good” in malware removal or removal of leftovers, based on those 10 samples. eScan, Symantec and Microsoft (MSE) were the only products to be good in removal of malware AND removal of leftovers. Due to the sample size, the final ratings may be generous, but we applied the scoring tables strictly. We tried to give different values for different types of leftovers, although this was very difficult in some gray area cases.

This was the first public malware removal test of AV-Comparatives and due the lack of generally accepted ways to rate malware removal abilities, we did out best to give a fair rating based on the observed overall malware removal results and to do not look / base out ratings on e.g. the deletion of the binary malware only.”

Sony Ericsson has been known to make some compelling smartphones that had sleek, solid designs at high prices, like the XPERIA X1 I purchased and then returned earlier this year. Today we see the announcement of their first Google Android device, the XPERIA X10 and I have to say this device is lustworthy with its 8 megapixel camera, custom Mediascape interface that is highly focused on media (a weakness in all other Google Android devices), Timescape technology that recognizes connections between contacts, content, and media, and much more.

The SE XPERIA X10 won’t be available until the first half of 2010, but it shows how awesome Google Android devices can be and I think 2010 will be the year of the Android revolution and I can’t wait. I loved seeing that the X10 will have a model supporting T-Mobile USA’s 1700 MHz frequency and I hope to see it released sooner rather than later.

Specifications of the XPERIA X10 include:

* 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250
* Up to 1GB integrated memory
* 4 inch 480×854 pixel resolution touchscreen display
* 8.1 megapixel camera with face recognition and stabilization
* WiFi
* Bluetooth
* A-GPS
* 3.5mm headset jack
* microSD card slot with 8GB card included
* microUSB for syncing and charging
* Support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync
Engadgets has a full hands-on look at the XPERIA X10 and this will definitely be one that I will find hard to resist. It has no hardware keyboard so it will have to be priced right for me to go for it though.