Publishing Flash video streaming

Question

What options do I have to publish Flash video from webcams other than Adobe's Flash Media Server and Red5? I would prefer a solution in .NET, Python or PHP but can't find anything.

Answer 1

Besides another commercial product, like Wowza Media Server, you could go with a CDN (Content Delivery Network), like Limelight Networks or Voxel.net. You might even be able to find a local hosting provider that would serve up live Flash video for you.

(Live Flash video in a non-trivial thing to do, so the options are a bit limited.)

Answer 2

It looks like WebOrb can do it: WebOrb FAQ (last entry)

Can I stream Flash video to a Flex/Flash client through WebORB? Yes, WebORB supports FLV video streaming. An example is included with the WebORB for .NET product distribution.

I haven't worked with WebOrb though, so I can't say for sure how easy it is.

Answer 3

Weborb (http://www.themidnightcoders.com/weborb/) has some awesome benefits on the data access side if you're looking to do some AMF as well as streaming video it could be a very decent option (and has a php and .net version).

On the python side I found (http://rtmpy.org/) but couldn't say too much about it as I have never used it...

Answer 4

Weborb can play flv over http, but cannot accept an rtmp live stream from a webcam, so cannot re-stream this input. In addition to the alternatives given for rtmp (FMS,red5,wowza) you could also use haxevideo.

Answer 5

WebORB actually can accept live video stream from a user camera and definitely can restream it to other clients. I provides a video chat demo right in the product distribution.

Answer 6

I have mainly used FluorineFX and WebORB in Flex business applications. I don't think fluorine supports video streaming, but WebORB definetely does. However, a colleague of mine searched a while to get it working with AS2 and didn't manage. Red5 was up and running with AS2 in no time. With AS3 there's lots of documentation from the site of WebORB. WebORB does has the advantage that is supports .NET, Java, PHP and Ruby. Silverlight will also be supported, so that'll be great!

Answer 7

If you are looking for a turnkey solution, you can use the Nimbb API, which allows recording of short videos from webcam using a widget you can embed in your site. You can also download the recorded video files in FLV format if you want (via Web Service), or simply use the Nimbb Player for playback. Hosting of videos is done by their servers, you only need to code a few HTML/Javascript lines.

Answer 8

Justin.tv has a turnkey API, similar to Nimbb.