Does webcam recording with Flex strictly requires a media server (FMS, Red5, Wowza,etc.)?

Question

Hi!

I'm trying to implement a flex app that will be able to record a video from a webcam and then upload it to a server.

I've only found tutorials and examples that require a media server running such as Red5, Flash Media Server and Wowza and an open rtmp stream to the server.
However, I want to know if it's possible to record a video locally and then submit it to the server with a simple HTTP request.

Is there a tutorial somewhere that shows how to do this? I'm really new in flex development and would love to have a step by step procedure :P

Thanks!

Answer 1

Your out of luck with this one. Your going to need a streaming server of some sort. Flex doesn't have the capabilities to record video to the users local drive or any drive for that matter.

Answer 2

There's a chance : )

haXevideo is a FMS/Red5 sort of server developed in haXe. The difference with those is that is very lightweight and it doesn't need any kind of installation.

So what you can do is redistribute it alongside your app so you can indeed record audio and video locally to an FLV file.

Not sure you remember Screenweaver, but the latest version was developed using haXe and it's called SWHX. On top of SWHX yours truly has built a wrapper called HippoHX and HippoHX does all the setup for you. If you download it, there's a sample that does exactly what you need (record to a local file).

Once you've recorded the file the only bit left would be uploading to the server, but that's no big deal.

Give it a go and if you find any problems fire me an email or join the (rather quite) mailing list for help.

Anything let me know,

Cheers!

Juan

Answer 3

Maybe you can do it with Red5.

Answer 4

If you don't mind not coding your own Flex player/recorder, then you could check out the Nimbb Player. It includes the Nimbb API and also a Web Service to download and save the recorded video files on your server.

Answer 5

Thanks for sharing this information.