Recording and playback of multiple video streams?

Question

I am planning an implementation for a lecture capture solution for a local university. It is supposed to record all aspects of the lecture: the presenter will be recorded using videocamera + mic, his desktop activity is captured and optionally the whiteboard is captured as well (using Mimio). These input streams arrive (as video streams) to a computer that stores the recording on its harddisk. The file format for the recording should be able the hold multiple streams (Matroska for example).

The recording will be available from the uni's website. So at the client-side Flash seems a natural choice.

The player should display the different input sources into different rectangular regions of the player. One region displays the presenter, another region displays the desktop recording.

As a Flash noob, this is kind of overwhelming. I have several concrete questions:

• Is it possible to use a Matroska file as source for Flash streaming? If yes, how?
• If no, is there another container format more suitable for this? The FLV format can only hold one audio and one video file.
• Is it possible to have one Flash client receive multiple streams and diplay them in different regions of its own canvas?

Your insights/ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Have you considered a pre-built commercial lecture capture solution like Echo360 or Winnov? There are Winnov demos which show multiple videos in a window.

Also, Wirecast from Telestream is good for bringing together multiple cameras and screen displayed content into a single stream. See the wirecast demos on youtube and livestream.com

John [at] WowzaMedia.com (disclosure: Echo360 & Telestream are partners of my employer, Wowza Media Systems)