h264 stream froma webcam

[ritpas]

Hi,

I want to view the h264 stream from a webcam into my flashplayer.
Do I need FMS to do that? I mean a simple live viewing, no recording.

I suppose I have to use the Camera class.

Thanks in advance,

Pascal

[tech_writer_00]

Hi Pascal,

Flash Player can't encode live video in h264, it only streams prerecorded
video encoded with h264.
You can capture live video using a web cam and Flash Player -- the video will
be encoded using the Sorenson Spark codec. For more information, see
[url]http://livedocs.adobe.com/flashmediaserver/3.0/docs/02_overview_architec_07.html[/url]
#1198259.

Without Flash Media Server, a client can only see the video they are capturing
locally. To broadcast that video stream to other users, you would need to use
Flash Media Server. There is a free development version of Flash Media Server 3
available from [url]http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediainteractive/[/url].

Hope that helps,
Jody

Senior Technical Writer
Adobe Learning Resources

[ritpas]

Many thanks for your answer Jody!

Actually, I have a customer request asking me to decode by using actionscript
3.0 a h264 stream coming directly from a callconf webcam.
But it is not clear for me because that means an already encoded live stream
but live streams are not encoded, aren't they? for me it is a raw stream which
has to be encoded.

According to you, flash player is only able to read h264 streams when coming
from an already encoded ?file (so and no live stream), isn't it?

[tech_writer_00]

Hi Pascal,

I suspect that the customer has seen that Flash Player supports h264 encoding
and assumes that means it can also encode live video using h264 as the video is
captured - but at this time, it cannot.

To send a recorded video to Flash Player, the video must be encoded using
Sorenson Spark, On2 V6, or h264.

Currently, there are 2 ways to send live video to Flash Player: build a custom
application for Flash Player or AIR that captures the video with a camera and
encodes it using Sorenson Spark, OR capture it with a camera and have Flash
Media Encoder 2 encode it with On2 V6.

Either way, if you want to broadcast that video to many users, you'll need to
use Flash Media Server.

For more information about Flash Media Encoder 2, see
[url]http://www.adobe.com/go/fme[/url].

Jody

[ritpas]

Some last questions : - I am wondering whether all h264 encoded files can be
read by flash player. For example, for testing purposes, I downloaded two
supposed h264 encoded files : the first, found at
[url]http://www.osnews.com/story/19019/Theora_vs._h.264[/url] is working well when
attached to a FLVPlayback component, the other found at
[url]http://blacksharkfr.free.fr/tm/Island_Tour_h264.avi[/url] doesn't work. So either it
is not real encoded h264 files or Flash player does only read some h264 encoded
video files and some not.

[tech_writer_00]

Check out this article (referenced in the FMS docs):
[url]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/hd_video_flash_player.html[/url]

Jodu

[ritpas]

thanks Jody

So according to the article, may be the second video which is not working has been encoded with an alpha channel .
May be ...

[prushby]

Jody I am interested in taking a MPEG4/H264 stream from a IP Network Camera to
upload to FMS and onto my clients. Clearly flash player cannot see the stream
so it would seem this is not possible at the moment - can you confirm this and
is there likely to be any way to achieve it in the near future?