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Inspiring
January 31, 2008
Question

h264 stream froma webcam

  • January 31, 2008
  • 5 replies
  • 1622 views
Hi,

I want to view the h264 stream from a webcam into my flashplayer.
Do I need FMS to do that? I mean a simple live viewing, no recording.

I suppose I have to use the Camera class.

Thanks in advance,

Pascal
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    5 replies

    February 3, 2008
    Jody

    I am interested in taking a MPEG4/H264 stream from a IP Network Camera to upload to FMS and onto my clients. Clearly flash player cannot see the stream so it would seem this is not possible at the moment - can you confirm this and is there likely to be any way to achieve it in the near future?

    February 3, 2008
    Check out this article (referenced in the FMS docs):
    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/hd_video_flash_player.html

    Jodu
    ritpasAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 3, 2008
    thanks Jody

    So according to the article, may be the second video, which is not working, has been encoded with an alpha channel .
    May be ...
    ritpasAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 2, 2008
    infact I am wondering whether all h264 encoded files can be read by flash player. For example, for testing purposes, I downloaded two supposed h264 encoded files :
    the first, found at http://www.osnews.com/story/19019/Theora_vs._h.264 is working well when attached to a FLVPlayback component, the other found at http://blacksharkfr.free.fr/tm/Island_Tour_h264.avi doesn't work.

    So either it is not real encoded h264 files or Flash player does only read some h264 encoded video files and some not which is most likely to me.
    February 1, 2008
    Hi Pascal,

    I suspect that the customer has seen that Flash Player supports h264 encoding and assumes that means it can also encode live video using h264 as the video is captured - but at this time, it cannot.

    To send a recorded video to Flash Player, the video must be encoded using Sorenson Spark, On2 V6, or h264.

    Currently, there are 2 ways to send live video to Flash Player: build a custom application for Flash Player or AIR that captures the video with a camera and encodes it using Sorenson Spark, OR capture it with a camera and have Flash Media Encoder 2 encode it with On2 V6.

    Either way, if you want to broadcast that video to many users, you'll need to use Flash Media Server.

    For more information about Flash Media Encoder 2, see http://www.adobe.com/go/fme.

    Jody
    February 1, 2008
    Hi Pascal,

    Flash Player can't encode live video in h264, it only streams prerecorded video encoded with h264.
    You can capture live video using a web cam and Flash Player -- the video will be encoded using the Sorenson Spark codec. For more information, see http://livedocs.adobe.com/flashmediaserver/3.0/docs/02_overview_architec_07.html#1198259.

    Without Flash Media Server, a client can only see the video they are capturing locally. To broadcast that video stream to other users, you would need to use Flash Media Server. There is a free development version of Flash Media Server 3 available from http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediainteractive/.

    Hope that helps,
    Jody

    Senior Technical Writer
    Adobe Learning Resources
    ritpasAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 1, 2008
    Many thanks for your answer Jody!

    Actually, I have a customer request asking me to decode by using actionscript 3.0 a h264 stream coming directly from a callconf webcam.
    But it is not clear for me because that means an already encoded live stream but live streams are not encoded, aren't they? for me it is a raw stream which has to be encoded.
    H264 live stream is a non-sense for me.

    According to you, flash player is only able to read h264 streams when coming from an already encoded file (so and no live stream), isn't it?