Webcam bandwidth question

Forum|Forum|19 years ago
June 10, 2007
1 reply
460 views

I have a question about saving bandwidth for a server. I love how the Flash webcam feeds look....but to run a webcam community site hosting a bunch of feeds would probably eat a bunch of bandwidth...

Here's my question... let's say that www.webcamcommunity.com has FMS installed and is doing (as the name suggests) a webcam community... Let's say Bob and Alice want to have a webcam chat using the flash interface.... Bob and Alice see each other on webcamcommunity.com and decide to go into a chat session.

Is it possible for Bob and Alice to then send their video/audio feeds directly to each other, bypassing the server? This would save mucho bandwidth for the server on a larger scale. Is that possible?

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A

Anonymous

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. In order to have client to client connections, the flashplayer would need to act as a server, which it doesn't.

When using FMS (or any of the alternatives to FMS), all of the streams have to go to the server first.

B

Benjamin_GotsensAuthor

Participant

I'm sorry for the amateurish question... but this is something I've been trying to work on for a while... I even spent 3 months teaching myself Flash and ActionScript from scratch so I can understand it better.... I'm trying to get a Webcam Community site off the ground but the biggest problem is the bandwidth costs....

The only answer I can come up with (however unfeasible) is to have the users transmit the feeds directly to each other.

Now you say that FMS is necessary... I'd like to know, what is it that FMS does with the feed that the users cannot do individually?

I.E. what is the difference between a flash live webcam conversation and, say, sending a file person to person thru AOL Instant Messenger?

I know this is probably a dumb question.... But I have been reading every article I can find about live broadcasts and haven't found any direct answers. Also, would you say that it is not possible PERIOD, or that nobody has been able to figure out how to do it YET?

Would very much appreciate an answer to this question as I've spent dozens of hours researching it.

A

Anonymous

quote:

Originally posted by: Benjamin Gotsens

Now you say that FMS is necessary... I'd like to know, what is it that FMS does with the feed that the users cannot do individually?

Most importantly, what FMS can do (that the flashplayer client can't) is listen for or accept incoming connections. If an application can't listen for incoming requests, it can't respond to them. That's why you need a server application.

quote:

I.E. what is the difference between a flash live webcam conversation and, say, sending a file person to person thru AOL Instant Messenger?

IM clients (like AIM, YIM, skype, etc.) act as a server. They sit there on your desktop listening for someone to come knocking. That's also how other p2p file sharing systems work... the client application also acts as a server. The flashplayer doesn't do that.... it has to go looking for a server.

quote:

I know this is probably a dumb question.... But I have been reading every article I can find about live broadcasts and haven't found any direct answers. Also, would you say that it is not possible PERIOD, or that nobody has been able to figure out how to do it YET?

If you want to use the flashplayer as your client, it's not possible to to p2p connections... period. It's not a matter of figuring something out, but rather, a limitation of the software.

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