I'm preparing to build a social networking web site that should have some form of webconferencing. First of all uploading should - if possible- be web-based. I want to make use of standard webcams probably in conjuction with a flash app that will upload the video stream. The server then will broadcast the stream together with storing it (Play While Archiving). The reason is I want to play old videos for users that couldn't see the conf.
My questions are:
- Is it possible to upload a video stream using flash-baseed in-html-embedded app? I know that flash has an access to local webcam but I don't have any expirience with ActionScript so I'm not sure if it's useful in my scenario. If it's not easy I can decide a destop-based client just for this sole purpose -- but I woud really like to keep everything in browser.
- What software should I use to make the server processing? I've done some research and VLC popped up together with Windows Media Services, Darwin Stream Server and Helix. I can use Linux or Windows - doesn't really matter. Which one gives me better scalability?
- I'm making an assumption that I need 1MBit of server upload for every connected user. Is it naive or is it OK and sufficient?
- Do I need to make any conversion/reencedoing on the server side?
- I think I'll slit the whole app into webserver, db-server and video server containing file-based video. I'm actually not sure about the last part - what do you think?