EzFlow - live video

Author Message

Michael Scofield

Tuesday 01 July 2008 12:16:54 am

Hello!

I'm trying to set up an Ez Flow website with Live Video Streaming.

My objective is to have a tool that I can use to record and broadcast live videos (like in a live television program).

I have already configured <i>Apache Ant</i>, <i>Java</i> and <i>Red5</i> Java-based server and also tested the Demos (<i>OFLA Demo</i>, <i>Simple broadcaster</i>, <i>Simple subscriber</i>, <i>Simple recorder</i> etc). Everything is working fine now. I can record with <i>Simple broadcaster</i> and internauts can watch it using <i>Simple subscriber</i> - but i'm using the demos.

My doubts concerns on how to do that using eZ Publish. I have created an object of class <i>Flash Recorder</i>, and filled it's attributes with the following data:

<b>Name</b>: Record Live Video
<b>Stream server</b>: rtmp://mydomain:1935/oflaDemo
<b>File server</b>: http://mydomain:5080/oflaDemo/streams
<b>Key</b>: ThisIsTheDefaultKeyChangeMe

(I don't know if it's the correct way of configuring the object. I just filled with information I got from the demos)

I published it and now when I open it in the browser (mydomain/ezflow/index.php/por/Live-Video/Record-Live-Video) I can record movies, but I don't know how to make it available to the internauts, be in a file for download or live like a television program.

I imagined that while I'm recording, if another internaut try to access the same page, he would see the live content I'm recording at the moment. But this didn't happen. If I open the same page again, ez Publish will provide the same interface and two people will be recording videos.

I looked in the back end for a class that I could use as the Player, but I only found <i>Flash</i> and <i>Video/Flash Player</i>. Both of them requires a file to be selected, so I cannot use it, because live content is being broadcasted by <i>Red5</i> and not from a file.

So, do I need to create new Ez Publish classes based on the demos to broadcast like the way I want? Is it necessary to create a customized Player (swf), because the players included with Red5 doesn't seem to have tools to forward a movie, for example.

Anyone can help me?

Thanks in advance
Michael Scofield

Michael Scofield

Wednesday 02 July 2008 6:36:09 pm

Ok, I finally understood the class <i>Flash Recorder</i> bundled with Ez Flow.

As the name says, it only records video and saves it as a FLV file with the help of the Red5 Flash server.

When the button Record is clicked, the SWF sends the video being shot to the Red5 Server, that writes it to the disk. After you click stop button, the video is made available for download in a discrete button in the bottom right part of the flash application. You will be able to download if <b>File server</b> attribute was filled with correct information during object creation (it must be a HTTP url folder, pointing to the directory where Red5 is saving recorded FLV files. I configured it using <i>Alias</i> and <i>Directory</i> directives inside apache httpd.conf file).

To show the FLV you just recorded, you must download the file as I said above, and you must create an object of class Video/Flash Player, uploading the FLV file. This FLV file will not be really streamed when the object is displayed in the browser, it will just use normal progressive download, because at this point, no Flash Streaming Server is being used.

Btw, to create a solution for broadcasting live video (as in a live TV program), one will need to hire a FLASH/ACTIONSCRIPT (or ADOBE FLEX) developer to create the SWF player. And also will need to hire a Java programmer to create the application for the Red5 java-based server. To make things easier, Red5 has working demos with source code available both for the swf player and the red5 application.

Michael

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