Hi,
I don't know much about deploying Flash video streaming solutions, and I want to know if the following can be accomplished in Flash.
I am creating an application where multiple people can watch a video at the same time , but one of those people controls the playback of the video for everyone. Furthermore, the controller is not always the same person, it can change if someone leaves or depending on other factors.
Please point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
I'm sure it's possible. I don't do flash; but here is a high-level idea about how to accomplish this:
Play the video on each client; and make sure they are in sync. But when the "controller" pauses, skips or stops the video, send a signal to each client repeating the action on their own client. You could do this using a database (for MySQL a table with back-end of type MEMORY should be good for this). Each second the clients ask the server if their has been a change of the "controllers" actions. Each time the "controller" makes an action it gets queued in the database.
The only issue I see left is making sure each client's stream is in sync (like, instead of "slowing down" when there is lag it simply "skips" to the frame that the "controller" is at)
I hope this helps a bit :)
EDIT
Each second the "controller" sends a message to the clients with his current frame count of the video... it could work.
Hi Nelson,
My current solution is similar - I have all clients connected through a messaging protocol, so I was going to have the controller send a message to all the other clients every time he performs an action.
However, this means that I have to do all the boilerplate stuff to keep people in sync. So I really want to know if Flash has any built-in support for something like this.
Thanks for your response!
Karthik
Hi Karthik
I would love to see more of this project -- can we chat about it sometime? -- would just love to see it in action!
please email me : [email protected]