Live video streaming from an IP camera

Question

I have around 10 Bosch IP cameras. I need to allow users to see live (around 10 fps) view from the selected cameras. The users will be in a local network. Connecting directly to the camera is not an option, because around 100 users may watch image from one camera.

I came up with this solution:

• Use TVideoGrabber to connect to the cameras (it supports getting image from Bosch IP cams).
• Set up a Windows Media Service on Windows Server 2008 (Windows Media Service Start Up)
• Configure the TVideoGrabber to stream to WMS (it supports it).
• Configure the Widnows Media Server to share the image via multicasting service.
• Users will have a playlist with all cameras and will be able to connect via Windows Media Player.

The schema is ok, however I'm wondering is there a simplier way of doing that? Maybye sharing the videos by using some Macromedia tools / Quicktime?

Answer 1

I had a similar need and I used this web site www.Streamby.com to just get my 2 IP camera re-streamed. This way you avoid any computer and encoder. You have to register your cameras to get a flash version stream of it on their site. I think you can also request the embed code if you need. Audio is not supported though, not sure if you need it.

It seems still a beta version but it works just fine for me and you can even set streaming schedules for your camera, aside the security of avoiding direct access.

Otherwise you will have to host a PC to encode the streams. In any case for 100 users you will need to rely on some external service provider.

hope this helps d