I've received a request asking if it's possible to stream live video to a web site. The person requesting this has a notebook running MacOS, a professional camera that can be connected up using Firewire and a web site with PHP/MySQL.
What solutions exist to stream the video out on the Internet and, if practical, what would be necessary to display the live video on a web page in programming terms ?
Edit:
There are these topics on stackoverflow but I'm not sure if they're relevant:
Live Video Streaming with PHP
How do I stream Live Video
There is also this page over at apple.com:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/delivery.html
top of my head, VLC Media Player. It has the ability to stream Live Video from a given capture device. There is a how to guide here.
One shortcoming I noticed is the end user must have VLC installed as well. But I am sure there is a way around it with enough research.
After some searching, it appears that the solution might be as simple as entering some html markup to point a player to the streaming server. I'm still unsure of this, however, and some tests will need to be carried out.
Related
I want to let users record video via webcam and then upload the recorded video to the site all through the browser.
Here is an example that works exactly how I want my site to work except it does not seem to capture video, just images.
http://www.xarg.org/project/jquery-webcam-plugin/
Please let me know if there is a way I can customize this or if there is something else out there that I can use.
I want something standalone and don't want to rely on another service to accomplish this.
Thanks!
We've been looking for the same thing, but from my research, it appears there's no way to do it strictly through jquery and Flash without some back end help.
What I've found is three options:
Adobe Flash Media Server
Wowza Media Server
Red5 Media Server
There's advantages and disadvantages to all three. Flash and Wowza are not free, but have great documentation and support. Red5 is free, but the documentation can be lacking depending on what you're doing.
We just signed up for a free 180-day Developer license for Wowza and are currently evaluating that.
HaxeVideo is an multithread FLV streaming server entirely written using the Haxe programming language.
And this link for information Haxe programming language.
But I found an easy way out for me. I have 2 options for you.
youtube api (Free) https://developers.google.com/youtube/youtube_upload_widget
http://nimbb.com/ (Not Free)
But if you want to try.
Check out http://hdfvr.com . It is a commercial video recording solution developed in Flash. It can record to both .flv and .mp4 files and when used with Wowza and the Wowza Transcoder it can record MP4 files with AAC audio and H.264 video.
It works with all 3 media servers in the top answer: Adobe Media Server, Wowza Media Server and Red5 Media Server .
You had better to use a third party tool like red5 or wowza. I already implemented wowza with php.
you can chech http://www.wowza.com/streaming/record. It is easy to implement and video recording is too good and fast. But it is not free.
This can be a good helpful resource for further readers. Click here
Wowza seems a good solution for recordings considering price/documentation&reliability ratio. Many users reported broken videos when trying to record with Red5.
This solution mentioned in Wowza Streaming Engine forums works with latest Wowza server.
http://www.wowza.com/forums/showthread.php?35683-Webcam-Video-Recorder-for-PHP-scripts
It's free to download and try so it could be a great method to test your setup and start such project.
Our aim is to create a live video streaming site for each individual paid registered user only by php platform.
I need video camera to take videos and i want to know function flow.I dont know where i have to start.
What are all things needed? Especially live video uploading using ordinary video camera. I have found http://www.videowhisper.com/?p=PHP+Live+Streaming This is the site, i exactly needed. Unfortunately but its camera option only includes "webcam only". I would like input video camera instead of webcam.
I need suggestions for requirements to create the site.
I need to stream live video for each paid user. That includes flash player content.
Uploading and video control by admin side. Only live links is shared to customers.
i think it is nothing about PHP, but something about JAVA.
You can use Red5 as media server, and users watch videos via flash player. You also can take videos with flash.
Found an interesting link on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology
And Symfony 2.1 is going to handle streamed responses: http://symfony.com/doc/current/components/http_foundation.html#streaming-a-response, but is not stable yet.
I am developing an application where I need to record voice(for those who does not have a webcam so they can use only microphone to record voice) or video(those who have a a webcam - like laptop or external) files and save them on server, thereafter save the file name and logged in users id on database for later access.
I know I need to use some sort of flash app for this. But is there any free one which could server this purpose or even if there are paid ones which could serve this purpose that would be great. I tried google but may be I was not being able to go after the proper term or something, I could not succeed finding a proper solution for this.
Please, help me out!
You can do that simply using jRecorder, a jQuery plugin. You don't even need a Flash Media Server or RED server. JRecorder is same as jPlayer, you can use jQuery and HTML to design your recorder and you don't even need Flash or Action script knowledge for this.
jRecorder uses 1 pix hidden swf file which manages all the recording / previewing and sending the file data (wav file) to a URL you defined (Where you can write code in PHP or Java to receive a POST file)
It is quite simple and tidy.
You can download this Plugin from:
http://www.sajithmr.me/jrecorder-jquery
I have same feature in our latest project, the client want to have video recording from webcam and the video appear in the user's profile page.
For the server, we implement the RED5 server. It need a Java virtual machine in your hosting. You can read the detail requirement and installation instruction in the website.
To handle recording, we develop our own flash application, because the client request a custom interface to match with the overall website interface. I don't know the detail, since we outsource it to a fellow flash developer. Maybe you can see follow this thread, the development of flash recording by JeroenW.
To play recorded video, you can use any flash video player that support playing rtmp video source. You cannot play the recorded flv file in RED5 directly, since the file lack of metadata required by the player. Serving the recorded file as rtmp is done by RED5.
In addition to red5 there is Adobe's own Flash Media server that allows you to record audio/video straight to the server.
Or if you feel geeky you might be able to put together your own solution for this using a socket connection to the server and decoding the stream yourself on the server side. You should be able capture the audio/video locally into memory and then feed the byte stream up to your own server application.
There are Open Source solutions but you will need an own server to run them.
There is no way to run these things from shared hosting except if your provider is really nice, and ready to install the necessary software.
I asked the same question a few weeks back, check out the answers.
This question when googling "How to record audio php" comes up first so here for anyone from the future.
A simple way to record audio with flash and save it with PHP:
https://github.com/clouddueling/SimpleRecorder
Record audio, post audio data to your choice of url.
You could try recordmp3online.com which has an SDK. The nice thing about this one, is that it doesn't need a third party server(ala Red5), and supports mobile devices that don't have flash installed.
I need help finding resources that would help me or at least point me in the right direction in building a Flash media server/PHP application. I basically want to improve my current application by instead of progressive download using flash media server so that the videos will not only stream well but they can't be downloaded by the end user.
What the current application does is show a login form on the homepage and then when logged in the user can then navigate the site by choosing videos from a particular video category or video uploaded by a specific user. All this is done with PHP. The video page uses progressive download to display the video after the video ID has been passed using PHP.
I need to know how PHP and flash media server work together. Are there any resources out there where I can find a good application example (really simple) that demonstrates how PHP and flash media server can be used to stream videos dynamically such that PHP checks for the login, video ID, video channels, and video category information while the flash media server streams the video.
Really, PHP and FMS shouldn't be talking at all. It can be done within FMS, but a much easier approach is to let your Flash Player (which you'll have to have anyway) do the talking to FMS. Flash to FMS communication is well documented and very easy. Just have the PHP call forth a Flash video player with whatever info you need. It would probably be eaiser to have PHP authenticate and give the Flash some sort of authentication token if you're really worried about security.
Just so you know though, just because your media is streaming doesn't mean someone can't download it. There's several tools to rip streamed media out there. It is of course more secure, but it's not full-proof.
You may want to try Red5 instead of Flash Media Server. I've use Flash Media Server in the past and it can be a pain to take care of. With Red5 you at least have more flexibility and it is free. If you go down the Red5 path you will find more people customizing it like this one time ticket for Red5 post. I believe that is very close to what you are looking for.
The biggest problem with PHP and Flash (mediaserver) is the different "flow" of code.
PHP is straightforward:
Start request, do something, send response. Done.
Flashmedia only loads (compiles) your code when a client connects, and then only events are triggered. Most operations do not return, but need a callback.
Load application.. wait for something.. Event launched: do something, fire off another request together with a response handler object.. etc.
I have build an extensive chatservice with FlashMedia server and PHP as front and back-end.
The front-end is simple: just plain PHP/HTML-pages which will eventually create an <OBJECT>-tag loading some Flash applet.
That flash applet should connect to the Flash media server using information/credentials passed to it with the FlashVars-option or loaded (generated) XML-data from a separate URL.
From that point, the Flash applet (client) does it's thing with the Flashmedia server.
For this example, you want to verify credentials from the Mediaserver. You should use the AMFPHP framework for that.
AMFPHP is a replacement for Macromedia's "Flash Remoting" system where Flash [applets/servlets] can do asynchronious communications over HTTP.
For the AMFPHP-framework you write an interface class wrapping your credential-validation code. There is a test-page which validated the response of your wrapper.
(The AMFPHP Framework can also generate AS2 sample code so you have an idea how the Flashmedia server should send an request and handle responses.)
A warning: AMFPHP uses POSTs to send
and retrieve data. In the past,
there were problems when more than
2k of data was truncated. I now only
use it for relative short messages.
AMFPHP is very reliable. You can use it to do external logging for example.
Using flash media server so that the
videos will not only stream well but
they can't be downloaded by the end
user
This won't really work. It make make it "harder" for some people in the same way that not putting a big, huge "download here" button makes it "harder", but the content is still being downloaded to their computer, just in a different way. Anything that's downloaded can be saved to the disk.
I am doing similar thing. First, for authentication, you can use FMS's authentication plug-in. Of course, you can make your own stuff in PHP. Instead of adding PHP into FMS's original Apache, I decided to run XAMPP in parallel, with different port of course.
To start and stop the encoder, you can make use of FMLEcmd command.
My environment:
Flash Media Development Server 3.5
Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1
XAMPP (at port 8080)
I have a PHP/AJAX/MYSQL chat application. I want to add video chatting to my application. How can I create live video streaming to be used for live video conferences/chatting in a PHP application. What are the key-terms I need to know if I wanted to build such a system? Is it a good idea in the first place to use PHP? Is there something I'm not thinking about? What other languages can I use, perhaps in conjunction with PHP?
I am not saying that you have to abandon PHP, but you need different technologies here.
Let's start off simple (without Akamai :-)) and think about the implications here. Video, chat, etc. - it's all client-side in the beginning. The user has a webcam, you want to grab the signal somehow and send it to the server. There is no PHP so far.
I know that Flash supports this though (check this tutorial on webcams and flash) so you could use Flash to transport the content to the server. I think if you'll stay with Flash, then Flex (flex and webcam tutorial) is probably a good idea to look into.
So those are just the basics, maybe it gives you an idea of where you need to research because obviously this won't give you a full video chat inside your app yet. For starters, you will need some sort of way to record the streams and re-publish them so others see other people from the chat, etc..
I'm also not sure how much traffic and bandwidth this is gonna consume though and generally, you will need way more than a Stackoverflow question to solve this issue. Best would be to do a full spec of your app and then hire some people to help you build it.
HTH!
Please note that the below described service is no longer available as
it was based on FLV media (Flash)
This project which utilizes the Red5, Flex and PHP for Live Video Streaming and Recording has many features
Stream Live video to the viewers
Record the streams from your cam or other video input devices to the server
Preview the recorded streams and files and thumbnail the frame which you would like to display for the video.
Upload the videos from your computer and convert them to FLV which can be streamed using Red5 .
Choose from any resolutions
Can be plugged to any script
Each website user can have a separate Directory for storing their videos and thumbnails use this link
http://code.google.com/p/red5-flex-streamer/
PHP will let you build the pages of your site that make up your video conferencing and chat applications, but it won't deliver or stream video for you - PHP runs on the server only and renders out HTML to a client browser.
For the video, the first thing you'll need is a live streaming account with someone like akamai or the numerous others in the field. Using this account gives you an ingress point for your video - ie: the server that you will stream your live video up to.
Next, you want to get your video out to the browsers - windows media player, flash or silverlight will let you achieve this - embedding the appropriate control for your chosen technology into your page (using PHP or whatever) and given the address of your live video feed.
PHP (or other scripting language) would be used to build the chat part of the application and bring the whole thing together (the chat and the embedded video player).
Hope this helps.
PHP/AJAX/MySQL will not be enough for creating the live video streaming application There is a similar thread here. It primarily suggests using Flex or Silverlight.
For live video conferencing you can't ignore the need of a streaming server.
Yes, flash will let you display video from a webcam within the local flash control, but that won't let you then send that video over the network - for that you need a streaming server to send it to.
If you're going to build something like this it's prudent to think about how you're going to host the video from a very early stage as it will influence how you build the application. Flash/Flex/Silverlight/Windows Media....etc....
There are a lot of "off-the-shelf" 'servers' that will run in your environment.
Most of these utilize the aforementioned Flex or Silverlight to implement the actual video itself but I'm pretty sure all will run under LAMP/PHP.
The challenges will picking the best software from everything that's available and getting your hosting-provider to let you stream video (it goes without saying that streaming is heavy on bandwidth).
You can easily build a website as per the requirements. PHP will be there to handle the website development part. All the hosting and normal website development will work just as it is. However, for the streaming part, you will have to choose a good streaming service. Whether it is Red5 or Adobe, you can choose from plenty of services.
Choose a service that provides a dedicated storage to get something done right. If you do not know how to configure the server properly, you can just choose a streaming service. Good services often give a CDN that helps broadcast the stream efficiently. Simply launch your website in PHP and embed the YouTube player in the said web page to get it working.
Same problem/answer here, quoted below
I'm assuming you mean that you want to run your own private video
calls, not simply link to Skype calls or similar. You really have 2
options here: host it yourself, or use a hosted solution and integrate
it into your product.
Self-Hosted
----------------- This is messy. This can all be accomplished with PHP, but that is probably not the most advisable solution, as it is
not the best tool for the job on all sides. Flash is much more
efficient at a/v capture and transport on the user end. You can try to
do this without flash, but you will have headaches. HTML5 may make
your life easier, but if you're shooting for maximum compatibility,
flash is the simplest way to go for creating the client. Then, as far
as the actual server side that will relay the audio/video, you could
write a chat server in php, but you're better off using an open source
project, like
janenz00's mention
of red5, that's already built and
interfacing with it through your client (if it doesn't already have
one). Or you could homebrew a flash client as mentioned before and
hook it up to a flash streaming server on both sides...either way it
gets complicated fast, and is beyond my expertise to help you with at
all.
Hosted Service
----------------- All in, my recommendation, unless you want to administer a ridiculous setup of many complex servers and failure
points is to use a hosted service like
UserPlane or similar and offload all the
processing and technical work to people who are good at that, and then
worry about interfacing with their api and getting their client well
integrated into your site. You will be a happier developer if you do.