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socialvisionklk
Participant
December 11, 2009
Question

Keep Multiple People in Sync from FMS?

  • December 11, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 534 views

I am trying to create a Flex application with a shared viewing experience for users watching video.  Specifically, there are a group of users in a virtual “room,” and one of them is the “remote holder”.  One approach is to have everyone have a video player, and then use our own protocol sent among the different Flash player instances to make sure people are in sync (we have our chat routed over XMPP for the people in the room).

However, we were wondering if there was a simpler way to do it using Flash Media Server.  Is it possible to create a synchronized viewing experience in FMS where everyone is always at the same point in the video?  And is it possible for 1 person to then have control over that stream (e.g. pause, play, seek, etc.) for everyone connected to that stream?

I’d love to get feedback from experts on this.

Cheers,

Karthik

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    1 reply

    D
    dsdsdsdsd
    Inspiring
    December 11, 2009

    socialvisionklk,

    the answer is yes; unfortunately for me it has been a couple of years since I worked with fms ( then it was flash communication server ); as a result I cannot point you to how I synced up multiple clients, other than to say that I would have the server send out a simple ping ( maybe the ping would include some simple time-related info ) to each client, and then each client would adjust itself accordingly;

    for instance, in my case my server-side AS within my .asc file would run a time-based loop, maybe every 1 second; in your case you have one client that you wish to be the controlling factor, so maybe when the time is right that client sends a message ( client.call( ... ) if I remember correctly ) to the fms, which in turn distributes that call to the clients;

    of course it must be said that one recipient might receive that call in 23ms, but another might not get it for 600ms;

    I hope that this gives you some encouragement, and maybe other up-to-date fms people will be able to be more specific;

    S
    socialvisionklkAuthor
    Participant
    December 11, 2009

    Hi dsdsdsdsd,

    Thanks for your reply!

    Basically your solution involves adding some state to the FMS, so the client will connect to FMS and tell it which room it is a part of, and then the FMS will keep on pinging it with the current state of the video stream, right?.

    How would we allow 1 client to be the "remote holder" and control the stream for anyone else? Would this also involve some server-side state and API?

    Cheers,

    Karthik

    Karthik Kailash | Product

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