Play a DVD using FMS

Well, if there has ever been a time I have wanted to slap myself on the side of the head and call myself a dummy, this is it.

I have been using this machine as a test server for several months now to do some .net development. To make it easy to get to from my machine I created an entry in my hosts file and named it 'intranet'. I have been so use to using that, that it is what I entered in the RTMP string. When I realized it, I started to change it but someone else just added the same entry to their host file and it worked.

It sure is a shame no one else has ever made a dumb mistake like that. Then I would not feel so bad :-)

Jay,

Thanks for the reply. First of all, this is all on a company intranet. The 'server' for now is just a Windows XP machine with IIS and FMS installed on it. I have been using it for a couple of months for some .net development I got thrown into and now for this flash development. There is no firewall between the other clients and this machine. They all have the latest version of Flash player installed.

There would really be no difference in their configuration and mine. Which is why I thought initially maybe something was being cached on my machine, or since I initially created the project on my machine, there was something being there that was causing the problem. That is why I renamed the original project folder and cleared my cache.

I did the http://domain:1111 and got back the response:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <result>
<level>error</level>
<code>NetConnection.Connect.Rejected</code>
<description>Admin user requires valid username and password.</description>
<timestamp>6/12/2007 1:04:58 PM</timestamp>
</result>

Doug

Abou the "press Enter or the Spacebar to activate the control" message, that's a behavior of internet explorer. As a result of the Eloas fiasco, any ActiveX object in an html page using <embed> or <object> tags throws that warning. You can get around it by writing the flash object to the page with javascript. Do a web search for SWFObject.js .... that's a popular one.

As for the video playing on your machine but not others, here are some things to consider:

Do all of the client machines have a current version of the Flashplayer? You'll want to make sure it meets the requirements of your .swf. The version requirement is determined by the Flash version you exported your .swf to.

It may be a firewall issue. Do the client machines have access to the FMS host on ports 1935, 80, and/or any other ports you configured FMS to bind to?

Is there are firewall on the FMS machine? If so, have you opened 1935 and 80 to FMS there?

If there's no firewall in the way, perhaps it's a problem with the IP/host you're using in your RTMP string. Can all of the client machines access FMS on the IP or host you are using? Try accessing the FMS admin service from a browser on the client machine, and see if you get a response. The admin service listens on port 1111, so the URL would look like:

http://myFMSdomainORipAddress:1111


Hope it helps.

Apparently something is missing because we have tried to access the video from a couple of other computers. They have Flash installed, do not give any erros, but just display a blank page. If you move the mouse into the area where the player is suppose to be, you get a message to press Enter or the Spacebar to activate the control, but doing so does nothing.
Thinking I was actually grabbing local files, I renamed my original project directory, cleared the cache from my browser but can still access the video on the server.

Any ideas what I should look for?

Okay, I think I have something going. If someone can confirm what I did here:
I created directory \test\streams\_definst_ under Program Files\Macromedia\Flash Media Server 2\applications on the server.

- I copied main.asc to \test\ folder on the server.
- Using the sample stuff, I created cafe_townsend_chef.flv from cafe_townsend_chef.mov using the video encoder and copied the .flv file into the _definst_ directory.
- Under Flash I created a project. I basically followed the steps of the online tutorial. When I published it I ended up with test.html and cafe_townsend_chef.flv.swf.
- I created a directory inetpub\wwwroot\\FLVTest\ on the server and copied those two files to it.
- I also copied the file ClearOverPlaySeekMute.swf into that directory. I thought I had read somewhere that it needed to be in the same directory as the flv file, but with it there it was not showing up on the client browser.

I did not quite understand the part about the global security settings. Is this something that needs to be configured on (all) client machines? The video appeared to play fine on mine without changing any settings.

Have a look at this tutorial. It should point you in the right direction.

http://www.mcalister.cc/ddd/flv/index.html

Okay, I got the aviconverted to flv. Can someone step me through what to do at this point?

I have just been told to not worry too much about the conversion part, although it will need to be done eventually. The "most important" part is to figure out how to set up the server to do the actual streaming. I do not want to spend a LOT of time researching, reading up on FMS, etc., because I am going to be out of here in a week and probably will not do anything with Flash again.

Basically want I want to know is, assuming I have an AVI file (myVidoe.avi) what are the full steps I must take to get it into a format the FMS can stream (I believe it is a .flv file), where do I place the file that is to be streamed (what directory, etc.), how do I set up FMS to actually stream it, and how do I reference the file from the client code HTML to actually pull in the vidoe on their browser.

Pretty much a quick 1,2,3 basic tutorial on how to get this going as quickly as possible.

Convert the video on the DVD into FLV format or try to feed the video thru ON2 encoder.