Can I do video communication with silverlight 4.0?

Question

With silverlight 4.0, it is possible to show a live video of the user on the screen: Here is the code

    VideoBrush videoBrush = new VideoBrush(); 
    CaptureSource captureSource = new CaptureSource
                                      {
                                          VideoCaptureDevice =
                                              CaptureDeviceConfiguration.GetAvailableVideoCaptureDevices().First()
                                      };
    bool b = CaptureDeviceConfiguration.RequestDeviceAccess();

    videoBrush.SetSource(captureSource);
    captureSource.Start();
    myrect.Fill = videoBrush;

However, I am looking at a way to show the video to someone else - seeing oneself on screen is not that interesting.

Is it possible?

Do I need my own server? Can I use clowd services to do the communication?

Are there performance issues?

Answer 1

Silverlight 4.0 supports webcams and with the video brush you can present a video. It does not, however, provide the network/streaming plumbing to capture a stream from a webcam and send it to a peer for real-time display.

I would imagine those middle bits are being worked on by Microsoft and third party vendors.

Answer 2

There will be no built in functionality for that in SL4.

This is the latest information I know (and I keep an eye on this since the SL4 beta): http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/145729/324400.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/SilverlightVoiceVideoChat.aspx

And Jeremiah Morrill made an open source project for SL encoding / decoding: http://silverlightencoder.codeplex.com