Need Help with Live Webcam and text chat

I don't mean to sound discouraging or preachy, but [properly built] video chat apps really do require some development experience. As you'll soon find, it's fairly easy to string together some prefabricated components and basic server side code to put together something functional, but if you want to show your client real value, you'll need to gain some real understanding about application development and application security [or farm the work out to someone who really knows what they're doing]. If you plan to approach this yourself, you should let your client know that you're venturing into uncharted waters, as not doing so would be a bit unfair.

That said, if you want a video chat application that runs in the Flashplayer, you'll need a few things:

1. Flash or Flex. You can code your client side application in Actionscript 2 or 3

2. Flash media interactive server, or another programmable RTMP server (there are a few Java options out there)

A streaming server (Flash Media Streaming Server for example) isn't adequate for a chat application. Along with your video streams, you'll need to manage users and application logic (user lists, user authentication, etc), and FMSS doesn't support the server side code you'll need to deploy.

When it comes to getting started with developing FMIS applications, I tend to recommend Brian Lesser's "programming flash communication server". While the book is pretty old, and most of the client side programming techniques are outdated, the server side coding principles haven't changed. My advice is to overlook anything that has to do with the prefabricated "communication components set" that is available from Adobe, and focus on the core programming principles and server side actionscript APIs so you can write code for yourself (using those components will quickly lead you to the brick wall where you need to start modifying the components to serve need they weren't build to serve).

Good luck.