high quality camera publish

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
October 24, 2007
2 replies
542 views

Hi, I'm fairly new to Flash Communication server..so bear with me. I am working towards a high quality self-broadcasting system that allows users to record from a camera and then publish the video..

At present my UK shared server currently only runs FCS 1.5

I am currently recording a stream to the FCS and am having trouble getting any high quality results..However I tweak the Camera.setQuality I either get mosaicing or dropping frames/out of sych audio.

Q1: Is this because of the video codec used on FCS 1.5? Does FCS 1.5 use VP6?

Q2: Is there any way to improve this... or do I need to upgrade to Flash Media Server 2 hosting to get better results?

Q3: as an alternative - is it possible to publish the Flash file as an EXE and capture the camera stream at a higher quality locally before uploading it?

Thanks in advance for any help

H.R.

This topic has been closed for replies.

H

h.risleyAuthor

Participant

Thanks for your thoughts.

The camera is a fairly high quality Mini DV Camera set to Webcam mode, so that isn't the culprit.

If FCS 1.5 uses Sorenson then perhaps that explains the quality issues. Can anyone confirm this?

I think you are right, it is time to set up a testing server for FMS2 and compare results..

S

sinergia

Participating Frequently

Encoding is always done in Sorenson's spark since FP6, FMS does not know what codec you are using, it simply handle the stream at tag level and does not elaborate the "payload". So, if you use the FP to grab video and stream it to the Server, I'll get a Spark encoded stream.
I can suggest you to lower frame rate, to set keyframe interval to 48 and to use setQuality(Q,0) with Q in the range 80-92.
On the subscriber use always video.smoothing=true - video.deblocking=2
If you need better quality you can try Flash MEdia Encoder 2, it is an external application which encode in Vp6 and can record locally the FLV while streaming.
For other tricks and tips: http://flashvideo.progettosinergia.com
http://flashvideo.progettosinergia.com

M

moschous

Participant

Hi,

did you finally find out anything about your problem?

I am facing similar problems about recording video and then delivering it by fms.
Actually, after recording video (e.g. sample.flv) , the video is saved on the streams/instance directory of application.

Then as being a client you have two options to view the recorded video:

1. ns.play("sample")
for that case the video is delivered properly

2. ns.play("playStream", -2);
That option needs some extra coding on Server-side:
this.myStream = Stream.get("playStream");
this.myStream.setBufferTime(0);
this.myStream.play("sample", -2);

for that case the video breaks - sucks :-(

Something that is remarkable is that the problem applies only for flv files which are recorded by flash-player.
For example if i use the flash "Media Encoder 2" and capture a sample.flv everything is fine (i mean for the delivery)
For that reason i tried to decode and then encode again the flv files by using ffmpeg but the input codec is not supported by ffmpeg. On the other hand a file which is captured by "Media Encoder 2" can be transcoded by ffmpeg and they have (Video: vp6f codec)

Does anyone have more experience on this issue?

Thank you very much!!

A

Anonymous

This may seem like an obvious question, but have you checked to make sure that the camera itself records at a high quality? Grab some kind of web cam recording application that records and saves to the hard drive. Just shoot a good 20-30 seconds of footage, different motion speeds, and varying sound volumes and pitches, then check that out. If the quality isn't high there, either, it's a good bet your webcam is the culprit. If it's OK, then yeah...something's up with FCS. I'm not terribly experienced with it myself, but I'd start by checking your webcam quality.

I -think- that 1.5 uses Sorenson for the video codec, but I'm not sure. I think it was released "back in the day" before Adobe/Macromedia went the VP6 route, but I'm really not too sure.

Another thing you could try would be to get a copy of FMS2 and install it on a local machine there, then run your application from within your local office (or on another server some place). Since you can get a free developer edition that supports up to 10 simultaneous user connections, you'd be able to test with it fairly well.

Good luck!

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