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shadowfist1105
Participant
January 26, 2007
Question

Displaying Video from a remote security device in Flash

  • January 26, 2007
  • 4 replies
  • 414 views
Here is the setup:
remote site has video cameras that feed to a central box (basically a PC but proprietary)
site sends out single video feed in H.264
site will accept commands to change the camera that is in the feed being sent out.
I have a central monitoring center that is run on a web based monitoring software using flash.
I want to be able to feed the video to the flash player and display it.

can this be done? would I need to change the video codec used or is there a way to convert it using the Flash Media Server?
or would I have to write my own server to do this?

I am trying to figure this out before I spend a large amount of time learning the Flash Media Server.

Thanks
Jim Fee
Viking Electronic Service
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    S
    shadowfist1105Author
    Participant
    January 26, 2007
    They would be real time video feeds. The box is third party, so I don't really know what the OS is, and I am sure they won't change the codec for us (unfortunately).

    What about using Director/Shockwave to view the video on the client (assuming I can find a server to use as traffic cop)?

    Just so you don't spend too much effort on me, this is all stuff to try and produce a proof of concept for a prospective partner. I appriciate any time and knowledge you can spare but don't go nuts. I was just hoping that this would not be a first for someone and they might have some insights.

    Thanks again for your response.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 26, 2007

    They would be real time video feeds. The box is third party, so I don't really know what the OS is, and I am sure they won't change the codec for us (unfortunately).

    About the OS, my reason for asking is I'm wondering what the possibilities for broadcasting the stream right to FMS might be. If we want a true live stream to be published to FMS (without developing new software to do it), our options are the Flashplayer, or one of the commercially available encoding/publishing tools like FlixLive or FME. It would be ideal if you can run one of those on the box handling the cameras, that would be the fastest and most efficient approach. If we can't do that, we need to first send the stream to another server where we can get it ready for FMS.


    What about using Director/Shockwave to view the video on the client (assuming I can find a server to use as traffic cop)?

    I don't work with Director, but there shouldn't be much difference from flash in the way netconnections and netstreams are handled. If the question is "can we push other sorts of video through FMS if Shockwave is the client", well, I'm not 100% sure (never tired anything like that), but my gut tells me no. First, I'm pretty sure FMS wouldn't know what to do with the incoming data or how to pakc it up fo the clients. Even if FMS was willing to take the bits and spit them out (I'm not a software engineer, so I don't really know how that part works), other media formats are going to have different sorts of headers and different packet structures, and I'd bet that Shockwave won't know what to do with it.

    Just so you don't spend too much effort on me, this is all stuff to try and produce a proof of concept for a prospective partner. I appriciate any time and knowledge you can spare but don't go nuts. I was just hoping that this would not be a first for someone and they might have some insights.

    No problem... I like to see people get FMS to work in new envoironments... and if the time spent gets someone else on board with the Flash platform it helps me in the end (greater Flash media adoption = more work for Jay).

    A
    Anonymous
    January 26, 2007
    It can be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video will need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

    If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp packets.

    About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish the stream.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 26, 2007
    It can be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video will need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

    If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp packets.

    About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish the stream.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 26, 2007
    It could be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video will need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

    If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp packets.

    About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish the stream.
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