I'm a C programmer and a total newbie to Flash/video/web world. Don't know where/how to start, and so would greatly appreciate your initial help.
Question
If I need to host flash videos off of my website (instead of embedding YouTube links on my webpages),
AND
If I need to provide player API like YouTube's that can be used, say, for supporting chromeless player versions customizable via this custom API of mine...
THEN
What do I need to do essentially...?
Write a custom Flash video player?
If yes, how? I mean, using which Adobe products / tools / SDKs / language(s)?
Is there anything free/opensource available for doing this? Especially, for Linux platform?
Write a new browser (firefox) plugin for users visiting my site?
Not sure how my custom Flash video player will get to the user visiting my site for the first time?
Any books, resources that cover this problem well?
Does the Flash content need to hosted off of a Windows server only?
Currently lost. Thanks in advance,
/SD
Flash has video playback support built-in, so all you need to do is use the Flash authoring environment or Flex to compile a .SWF file that uses the video API, with some buttons to stop and start the stream, volume, seeking, anything else you want your player to do.
Many people have already done this for you, in a way you can easily use from simple HTML. See eg. OSFLV, Flowplayer, JW...
Write a new browser (firefox) plugin for users visiting my site? Does the Flash content need to hosted off of a Windows server only?
Lord no! Flash video would never have taken off if it was just another custom-server+custom-plugin piece of unpleasantness. Though special streaming servers are possible, for the most part it's just an FLV file sitting on a web server.
(FLV is the video format supported by the Flash video playing functions. There are many, many tools you can use to convert other formats to it; I use Avidemux.)
If you are planning to use a "Progressive Download" approach, then your FLV files can be hosted on a Windows or a Linux box. Be aware that:
it is no as efficient as true
streaming.
you may not use it for live events
nor only for stored video files.
it cannot automatically detect the
end user's connection speed.
it is not possible to jump ahead to
another part while it's downloaded.
the video file will be saved on the
end user's computer.
If you are planning to use a "Streaming" approach then you can either buy and use Adobe's solution (Flash Media Server, available on both Windows and Linux box) or sign up for a hosted solution. On this page you will find recommended providers by Adobe. I personally have been using Influxis's hosting with success for a couple of years already.
You can also write your own streaming server but that would be a lot of hard work. If you are interested in that, I would recommend you have a look a Red5 which is an open source Flash Server written in Java.
Related
I'm trying to stream a microphone/audio to multiple clients.
the broadcaster is a screenless raspberry, so I can't open a Webbrowser and click on "share mircophone"
The clients will be using their smartphone to listen.
the latency must be super low.
I did not find any WebRTC Demo that worked. All of them are either p2p or the scalable Broadcasting from muaz khan is only working for the initiator; not clients.
I came across Janus (which I didn't really understand what exactly this is doing) but I don't get how to install this and how to configure it.
Is there any way to easily share the microphone's output via WebRTC? Something like Apache hosting a simple website where the microphone audio is hosted on?
Thanks for all the ideas on how to solve it!
Is there any way to easily share the microphone's output via WebRTC?
No. There's nothing easy or simple about WebRTC.
the broadcaster is a screenless raspberry, so I can't open a Webbrowser and click on "share mircophone"
This is the simplest option... running a browser. Are you sure you need to actually allow it to access the audio device?
In the past, I've used a flag on Chromium to get around this problem. I don't remember exactly what that flag was, but looking at the list, it might have been...
--use-fake-ui-for-media-stream
You might also be able to use --enable-kiosk-mode.
At a minimum, if you were to open the browser interactively and enable access, that page would get automatic access in the future.
I did not find any WebRTC Demo that worked. All of them are either p2p
WebRTC is peer-to-peer, but remember that the "server" can be one of those "peers".
Finally, you can look into using GStreamer, but don't expect anything quick and easy. https://github.com/centricular/gstwebrtc-demos
I have a product that can analyze video after inputting an rtsp url.
I would like to use a webcam to stream and feed my product the webcam rtsp.
How can I do that?
It will depend on the webcam you are using - most support RTSP but many do not publish the interface to access the stream as they are designed to be used with the webcam's own companion app.
There are some web resources which provide the RTSP urls for common web cams - you may find it hard to find a match as new versions of webcams roll out but it should give you a feel how to try accessing a vendors camera if you have a specific web cam you are testing against. Some examples (at the time of writing):
https://www.getscw.com/decoding/rtsp
https://soleratec.com/get-support/rtsp/
If you can't find the info for the camera you are using, and you have the companion app, you can also use a network sniffer tool like Wireshark (https://www.wireshark.org) and try to search the traffic for 'rtsp://' pattern.
If you just need to test your app and have access to a raspberry pi with a camera module you can also use this to generate an RTSP stream - there are several approaches for this but one I have found reliable is the v4l2rtspserver server:
https://github.com/mpromonet/v4l2rtspserver
There are specific instructions for setting it up on PI (https://github.com/mpromonet/v4l2rtspserver/wiki/Setup-on-Pi) and you can also verify it is working using VLC player on a laptop etc before testing in your specific application.
There are also a small number of test RTSP urls available on the web - the most reliable seem to be the one at this link provided by Wowza (again, link valid at time of writing):
https://www.wowza.com/html/mobile.html
I am trying to make an online examination portal. When students start the exam, their webcam will start automatically and record the stream live and store in the server. Invigilators will either watch the students live or they can watch the saved live streams later.
I researched about this and found WebRTC as a possible solution along with a gateway server like Kurento. But later found out that WebRTC is not supported in Safari, which is a setback! My application should run successfully in web portal in any modern browsers which includes safari and also in android or iphone.
So can anyone suggest a possible solution to my problem? Which technology should I use that can support all browsers and OS?
Also, it would be helpful if you can provide links to good documentation or tutorials.
Note from the future (2020): This answer really isn't accurate anymore.
WebRTC is one problem... capture from the camera with getUserMedia is another. Safari doesn't support either.
There is no video capture API in Safari currently. The only thing you can do is make a native app for iOS.
Worse yet, because of Apple's restrictive policies, alternative browsers, such as Chrome, are crippled on iOS as they aren't allowed to use their own browser engines.
Use standards based technologies like getUserMedia and WebRTC for your primary web-based application. If you decide that the economics of your situation enable it, you can make an iOS app to work alongside until Apple decides to participate in modern browser standards like everyone else.
You can use Mediadevices.getUserMedia (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaDevices/getUserMedia) to capture webcam stream on browser (chrome and firefox).
To play with webcam stream on safari, you would have to use a pollyfill - https://github.com/Temasys/AdapterJS
To record the video/audio stream, you can make use of Media recorder api https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaRecorder (Note : recording stream is still a challenge in Safari as there is no support/pollyfill. However, it works perfectly on Chrome and Firefox latest versions).
Helpful demonstrations :
https://webrtc.github.io/samples/
https://mozdevs.github.io/MediaRecorder-examples/index.html
https://codepen.io/collection/XjkNbN/
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/04/record-almost-everything-in-the-browser-with-mediarecorder/
I want to first of all thank everyone for the help I got here in the past. After completing my web application using Html, PHP, jQuery, Javascript, CSS, MYSQL, I realized I don’t want a website. In the end, for security, I prefer knowing who will be accessing my application. Having said that, I want to use most of the work I already did for my website. I understand I can use PHP with AIR and MySQL. I read that many would recommend using SQLite, but my problem is that I will constantly be updating the database. I also read there are some security issues using MYSQL and AIR.
Question 1, if I took the "necessary" security precautions within PHP which connects to MYSQL, would that be ok or is there soething else I should be aware of wit AIR ?
Question 2 if I really need to use SQLite, is there a way to connect to Mysql so that I may update the database.
I'm open to suggestions if there is a third party software that will covert my project to a desktop application with connectivity to MYSQL I also have a third party flash embedded.
Thanks
Make it mandatory to sign in to the website to use it. Will that not be sufficient to know who is accessing your application?
PHP is a server side language. Adobe AIR is desktop application framework. I am not sure that converting a PHP-MySQL application to an Adobe AIR application will be a trivial task.
You can take the distributed application route though by doing the client side in AIR and writing the web services in PHP/MySQL. And if you want a distributed database too, it will get lot more complicated.
You can build a rest api with php and integrate it with adobe air applications via http no need js for this. Just use actionscript with urlloader urlstream.
If you need an offline db you can use sqlite and sync with Mysql via php.
You'll have to forget PHP and use javascript and SQL sintax to do it. You can check this pretty guide from adobe to do so http://help.adobe.com/en_US/air/html/dev/air_htmldevguide.pdf
It won't be easy ;P
Is it possible for a website to automatically find a folder on usb stick and upload all the files in it to the web server by clicking only one button?
The problem is that I don't know how to make upload form automatically detect usb stick as the drive name(ie. G:, F:, etc) may vary from computer to computer, so hard coding path is not possible.
Ps. I'm using yii framework for site development, but can add a new page that will handle this in any other language as the client really wants this feature.
Web sites are not allowed to set default files to upload (it's a major security risk!). Also, web sites cannot scan the hard drive/enumerate what file systems exist on a system, again, for security purposes.
It might be possibly to do this with Flash/Silverlight/Java. Java seems the most likely to allow a web developer to do this (Java plugin seems to be quite willing to give out every permission under the Sun).
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Allowing automatic uploads in web browsers would be a huge security hole so the browsers intentionally prevent it. Even if you manage to find a hole that permits it, the browser makers will break it as soon as they find out.
However, if you have an environment where an actual separate program can be installed on the end user's computer you could easily write a program to do automated uploads of specified directories when launched.