23 May 2008 11:22 AM EDT

A new Hotfix Rollup Pack for Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 has just been released that includes enhanced Flash version support. HRP05 for PS 4.0 for Windows Server 2003 (see http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116264) has a new generic method of handling new Flash versions. HRP05 for PS 4.0 for Windows 2000 Server (see http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116259) supports up to Flash 9f.

Derek Thorslund
Product Strategist, Multimedia Virtualization

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So when is the solution for 4.5 going to be released?  Kind of strange that this made it out in 4.0 before 4.5

Posted by Joel Donaldson at May 23, 2008 16:12 | Reply To This

As I understand it, Hotfix Rollup Packs are released every few months and collect a number of hotfixes together so that they can be well tested in aggregate and made widely available. Hotfix Rollup Pack 2 for XenApp Presentation Server 4.5 was just recently released (it supports up to Flash 9d) so the next HRP for 4.5 is going to be a ways off. However, our Life Cycle Maintenance (LCM) team prioritizes individual hotfix requests based on factors like urgency and extent of customer demand, so I urge any customer with an immediate need for a hotfix on 4.5 to support Flash 9f to express this need by opening a case with Citrix Technical Support. Since the generic fix to handle new versions of Flash has already been developed, I would expect that LCM can respond to such requests in a timely manner (and I've alerted them to expect such requests).

Derek

Posted by Derek Thorslund at May 23, 2008 18:51Updated by Derek Thorslund | Reply To This

Hey, those of us on 4.0 still... and W2K appreciate the hotfix.  We plan to go to 4.5 in 2009.

Posted by Anonymous at May 27, 2008 21:03 | Reply To This

We are having a bit of a nightmare obtaining the correct fix for 4.5 X64.  We are being told to try the X64 version of sphook.dll (sphook64.dll) but my understanding is this will not be used as flash is 32 bit based?

Is there a way to identify whether or not speed screen flash accelearation is being used.  Looking at 2 videos running on a server with and without the hotfix we had suppled there was no discernable difference between the 2.  It would be good to know how to check that the Flash Acceleration is active.

Many thanks in advance.

Posted by Jon Stacey at Jun 09, 2008 06:42 | Reply To This

Hi Jon,

Yes, Flash is a 32-bit app, but it can be used with sphook64.dll on 64-bit systems.

A hotfix designated PSE450R02W2K3028 is currently being tested for XenApp PS 4.5. It has the generic fix for new Flash versions. Keep in touch with our Tech Support department to obtain it (no doubt it will start its life as a limited release hotfix and then get rolled into a general Hotfix Rollup Pack).

Here's how I check to see if SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration is working. I go to a site with Flash videos like YouTube and right-click on a video. One of the choices is Quality. If SpeedFlash is working, the quality should already be set to Low without me having to manually adjust it. By automatically adjusting the quality to Low, even if there is a high speed connection from the XenApp server to the Internet, certain features like smoothing and anti-aliasing are turned off and the images become simpler to compress. This reduces CPU consumption on the XenApp server (which improves scalability) and bandwidth consumption. This is especially true of Flash graphics and animations but there is also some benefit for videos. Nevertheless, in my experience, it is not unusual for Flash video to consume somewhere around 4 Mbps of network bandwidth. That's why the Apollo team here at Citrix is busy adapting our RAVE technology (currently used in SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration) to handle Flash. RAVE supports HD video and audio, and uses less than 5% of the bandwidth of non-RAVE video. I'll be posting a video about that as soon as I get some spare time (it has been very hectic here in the world of Multimedia Virtualization lately!).

Derek

Posted by Derek Thorslund at Jun 14, 2008 15:50 | Reply To This