Last fall, Adobe released Creative Suite 4. The CS4 upgrade featured a new Flash Video encoder. Encoding Flash video is a big deal cuz video-on-the-web is a big deal (and getting bigger every day), and cuz Flash video is the predominant web-video format .. with some sources claiming usage as high as 84%.
The new CS4 Flash Video encoder comes with the following products:
Up to CS3, this encoder was called the » Flash Video Encoder (FVE) .. or the Flash CS3 Video Encoder (FVE.CS3). [ *** See UPDATE note #1 at the end of today's entry. ]
With the release of CS4, Adobe change its name to » Adobe Media Encoder (AME) .. or Adobe Media Encoder CS4 (AME.CS4) .. cuz it does more than encode just FLash Video files (FLV).
If you search for the terms » Adobe Media Encoder CS4, you might wind up » HERE, a page which contains a 62-MB *upgrade* (v4.01) to the AME.CS4. But nowhere could I find a download for the AME.CS4 encoder itself (a stand-alone version).
You might also stumble across this page, titled » Flash Media Live Encoder 3 (FMLE.3), which offers a free download (~5MB). But the free FMLE.3 encoder is not the same product as the Adobe Media Encoder that ships with the CS4 versions of Flash & Premiere Pro.
Even more confusing .. you might stumble across links to something called the » "Adobe Flash Media Encoder" (FME - note no 'Live' here). But this is not the new AME.CS4 encoder either.
Actually, this is an older version of Flash Media Live Encoder 3 (FMLE.3). With version 3, Adobe added the word 'Live' to differentiate this product from the new AME.CS4 encoder.