RealEyes Media

Challenges of the Mobile Platform

• Delivering a multimedia experience
• Performance & Memory
• Usability and User Experience

Solutions

• Flash Player 10.1
• Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) based media playback
• Custom, light-weight framework for visual presentation and data management
• CSG Systems’ Content Direct

Background

Realeyes Media, together with CSG Systems, built the Content Direct Mobile media streaming application. CSG Systems (NASDAQ: CSGS) provides software and services-based solutions that help clients improve commerce by better engaging and transacting with their customers. CSG provides enabling applications and a monetization platform to engage customers wherever they consume content.

Content Direct, a business unit of CSG, is focused on providing a complete ecosystem of online, mobile and OTT content and merchandising solutions.  Its solution empowers service providers, content creators, aggregators and distributors to easily and effectively market, monetize and manage their members and build engaging relationships by leveraging rich content.

Content Direct was created  to manage live events, content for video, music, games, other digital wares and physical merchandise and provide a flexible “browse, buy and belong” membership experience.  Content Direct provides consumer the ultimate flexibility in how they find, pay and manage their content choices and how they interact with their entertainment brands.

Content Direct is architected as a set of application modules (Member, Content, Commerce and Advertising) that expose its functionality through a set of well defined web services to applications such as the Online Storefront for Devices, , a Customer Care  Portal, Reporting Portal and the Invision Portal, a metadata manager.

Some of CSG’s  clients include:

• Ultimate Fighting Championship
• NBC Universal Sports
• Onlive (Gaming)

CSG chose RealEyes as their partner to extend Content Direct’s online experience to mobile, enabling customers to market their premium video pay-per-view or subscription content on mobile devices.  Content Direct enables consumers to be able to watch, buy and manage their content from any device at anytime, anywhere.  Having established online, OTT and connected device solutions, Content Direct Mobile provides another way for customers to view and manage their content.   Content Direct Mobile allows users to search for content, buy video, manage their account and watch videos from their Flash enabled phones.

CSG partnered with RealEyes and Adobe to create Content Direct Mobile.  RealEyes and Adobe were obvious partners to extend Content Direct Mobile’s strategy.   RealEyes’ deep experience with Flash, Flash Mobile, OSMF combined with their relationship with Adobe were invaluable, and Adobe’s Flash penetration and the planned rollout to the mobile devices worldwide made Adobe a natural partner in deploying the Content Direct Mobile solution.

The Application

The Content Direct Mobile application uses the Content Direct’s existing data services and streaming media built for existing browser based clients and leverages the Flash Player 10.1 mobile player to create a rich and engaging mobile client experience to search, manage and view personalized media selections and libraries. Using a custom and light-weight visual presentation framework, the Content Direct Mobile application manages visuals and content in such a way as to conserve as much memory and resources as possible.

The Framework

Taking into account the Flash Player 10.1 improvements and optimizations already provided by the Flash Player team, the Content Direct Mobile application framework was built for speed and light weight. RealEyes built a powerful lightweight layout management system and UI controls that were optimized for mobile application development. This provided the application a versatile and sturdy foundation to build upon. Some of the challenges that we looked to address early on were screen rotation, and resolution independent layout. One of the benefits to both of the above challenges was there was no need of new ActionScript API’s or Flash runtime to build and manage such issues. This allowed us to utilize our past experience and apply it to the mobile application arena without losing a step.

Another area of focus for the framework and optimization was screen transitions and dynamic media asset management. Utilizing the robust ActionScript 3 bitmap management and caching appropriately for both content and motion played a major part in this. The custom bitmap management allowed us to maintain high quality motion and frame-rate while still keeping power and file weight low.

We enabled full branding and UI skinning via the clients data services and an Adobe Flash Professional source file created and managed in Flash CS5. Currently this media asset package creates a library file (SWC) that is utilized by the pure ActionScript 3 application developed in FlashBuilder 4.

The Media Player

The Content Direct Media player was built using Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework (OSMF). A testament to the quality of the OSMF and Flash Player 10.1, is the ability of the player to perform on a mobile platform without modification. In the future the media player could be an area of modification for optimization and performance enhancement, but right out of the box OSMF filled our needs and exceeded our expectations.

The extensibility of the OSMF allowed us to build in a custom control bar that is highly customizable for any client of Content Direct. In addition the OSMF plugin extensibility capabilities are a major benefit to the project and offer a high level of extensibility with ease.

The Bonus of AIR for Android

Having built the Content Direct Mobile application as an ActionScript 3 application, the transition from a browser based application to a natively installed Android application was accomplished with minimal effort. The following is a basic overview of all we needed to do to create a the AIR for Android application package:

• We began by extending the main ActionScript class from the browser based application in our AIR for Android application.
• Integrate features built into to the Android Operating System, such as keyboard functionality and navigational features using the updated APIs from the AIR for Android SDKs.
• Listen for and respond to events associated specifically with the mobile application to handle screen orientation and sizing efficiently.
• Package an AIR file by use the Andoird SDK adt commands to create the Android package (apk).

Conclusion

As the Flash Platform matures and grows on mobile we are looking forward to the ability to collaborate with Adobe and other companies allowing us to use our existing, skills, content and code on an ever increasing number of devices. Another exciting facet of the improvements and optimizations for Flash Player on mobile is how it will affect other device platforms – from laptops and netbooks, to set-top boxes and consumer devices – the possibilities are expanding and very exciting for us.

Overall we at RealEyes have been incredibly impressed with the capabilities and the development process for Flash applications on the Android devices. Some challenges were encountered with integration into the browser when it comes to rotation and form inputs, but Adobe has recently released an excellent article which addresses many of those issues. Performance and battery life have been nothing less than astonishing, and even the video playback without hardware acceleration (a temporarily missing feature) has been very promising.

The biggest changes in development are solely around form factor for UI, and optimization for devices with lower power capabilities than the desktop. For those who are more reliant upon a full framework like Flex it may be a little more of a challenge, but with reasonable ActionScript skills and consideration for complexity and optimization it is amazing how easy it is to make robust applications for a Flash enabled mobile device.