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davidela
Participant
June 16, 2009
Question

Streaming Movie DVDs within school network?

  • June 16, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 1044 views

Hi All

Im looking to stream educational DVDs within my school, i now have a spare server but im not 100% sure what adobe flash product i need to do this?

As ive seen a few different options to buy but thinking will the Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server  3.5 be good enough?

Also the streamed files are they all via web page or can you use something like VLC player and connect to streamed files that way?

What would the address be for the site interally http://SERVERNAME/????? should it just bein IIS?

Thanks

David

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    A
    andi_-YSLAUm
    Known Participant
    June 17, 2009

    You just need to encode the movies in FLV format which you can do with FFMPEG (free and there is mac os x gui to make it easier to use...there are other free FLV encoders but a lot of them are wrapped FFMPEG anyway..VLC uses it for example). Then you can use a normal webserver (IIS is fine) and deliver them via HTTP directly into the students browsers using some simple SWF based FLV player (like JW Player or make your own if you have Flash Professional). You can just use the IP number of the IIS server to make links to the FLV files. If the students can see the disk with the FLV files on it they can open them directly using any video player that will play FLV's. Check the file sizes you are ending up with so you don't flood the local network, breaking them up into chapters is usually a good idea to minimise the amount of traffic (there is no point in loading a 70 minute video across your network if the student only wants to view a 5 minute segment).

    D
    davidelaAuthor
    Participant
    June 18, 2009

    Thanks for your reply

    So how do you actually publish the site?

    Is it through the admin console? as ive been struggling with the demo on how to do this i can only seem to get it going by opening a browser and going to file:///C:/Program%20Files/Adobe/Flash%20Media%20Server%203.5/webroot/index.html

    Also im guessing you can create a load of pages with flash videos on each page as you wish?

    Or do you just have a folderwith all the flash videos in and the prgram will do the rest?

    A
    Anonymous
    June 18, 2009

    FMSS is a media server, and FMIS adds a scriped programming environment. Neither version accepts http or ftp uploads, and although it ships with a bundled version of Apache httpd server, it's really not meant to serve entire websites (you could... but it's really not intended for that). The purposes of FMS are:

    1. Serving streaming video

    2. Sharing real time actionscript data amongst connected clients (FMIS only)

    3. Execution of actionscript code (FMIS only)

    Typically, your HTTPD server (IIS) will serve an HTML page and flash client (.swf), and the Flash client makes the connection to FMS to consume the video. You can't use a typical VLC player, but if you wanted a desktop application instead of an HTML page, one could be developed by any good actionscript programmer.

    As for serving multiple videos, you don't need a separate .swf or html page for each. You can pass variables to the .swf at runtime, and the .swf can be programmed to use those variables to determine which video to request.  You can use an application server (php, asp, etc) or javascript to provide the variable data to the .swf. In the end, you have one page, and one .swf.

    For publishing video to the site, you'll need to use either an application server or an FTP server (or if this is all done over a LAN, you can allow access to the network directory where you'll store your video files). The storage location for the videos needs to be either local to the FMS installation, or available to FMS via network path. In the case of the later, you'll need to configure a virtual directory within FMS (so FMS can find the video files)

    As to whether you need FMS for your application... if all you need to do is serve video, you don't absolutely need FMS. Provided that your network (it sounds to me like this is all happening on the school's local network... correct me if I'm wrong) has enough speed, you could do this with just IIS and a Flash client without aversely affecting the UX. If you don't have concerns about rights management, access authorization, or shared data, FMS might be overkill for the task.

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