high quality camera publish

[h.risley]

Hi, I'm fairly new to Flash Communication server..so bear with me. I am working
towards a high quality self-broadcasting system that allows users to record
from a camera and then publish the video..

At present my UK shared server currently only runs FCS 1.5

I am currently recording a stream to the FCS and am having trouble getting any
high quality results..However I tweak the Camera.setQuality I either get
mosaicing or dropping frames/out of sych audio.

Q1: Is this because of the video codec used on FCS 1.5? Does FCS 1.5 use VP6?

Q2: Is there any way to improve this... or do I need to upgrade to Flash Media
Server 2 hosting to get better results?

Q3: as an alternative - is it possible to publish the Flash file as an EXE and
capture the camera stream at a higher quality locally before uploading it?

Thanks in advance for any help

H.R.

[Josh Hughey]

This may seem like an obvious question, but have you checked to make sure that
the camera itself records at a high quality? Grab some kind of web cam
recording application that records and saves to the hard drive. Just shoot a
good 20-30 seconds of footage, different motion speeds, and varying sound
volumes and pitches, then check that out. If the quality isn't high there,
either, it's a good bet your webcam is the culprit. If it's OK, then
yeah...something's up with FCS. I'm not terribly experienced with it myself,
but I'd start by checking your webcam quality.

I -think- that 1.5 uses Sorenson for the video codec, but I'm not sure. I
think it was released "back in the day" before Adobe/Macromedia went the VP6
route, but I'm really not too sure.

Another thing you could try would be to get a copy of FMS2 and install it on a
local machine there, then run your application from within your local office
(or on another server some place). Since you can get a free developer edition
that supports up to 10 simultaneous user connections, you'd be able to test
with it fairly well.

Good luck!

[h.risley]

Thanks for your thoughts.

The camera is a fairly high quality Mini DV Camera set to Webcam mode, so that
isn't the culprit.

If FCS 1.5 uses Sorenson then perhaps that explains the quality issues. Can
anyone confirm this?

I think you are right, it is time to set up a testing server for FMS2 and
compare results..

[sinergia]

Encoding is always done in Sorenson's spark since FP6, FMS does not know what
codec you are using, it simply handle the stream at tag level and does not
elaborate the "payload". So, if you use the FP to grab video and stream it to
the Server, I'll get a Spark encoded stream.
I can suggest you to lower frame rate, to set keyframe interval to 48 and to
use setQuality(Q,0) with Q in the range 80-92.
On the subscriber use always video.smoothing=true - video.deblocking=2
If you need better quality you can try Flash MEdia Encoder 2, it is an
external application which encode in Vp6 and can record locally the FLV while
streaming.
For other tricks and tips: [url]http://flashvideo.progettosinergia.com[/url]
[url]http://flashvideo.progettosinergia.com[/url]

[moschous]

Hi,

did you finally find out anything about your problem?

I am facing similar problems about recording video and then delivering it by
fms.
Actually, after recording video (e.g. sample.flv) , the video is saved on the
streams/instance directory of application.

Then as being a client you have two options to view the recorded video:

1. ns.play("sample")
for that case the video is delivered properly

2. ns.play("playStream", -2);
That option needs some extra coding on Server-side:
this.myStream = Stream.get("playStream");
this.myStream.setBufferTime(0);
this.myStream.play("sample", -2);

for that case the video breaks - sucks :-(

Something that is remarkable is that the problem applies only for flv files
which are recorded by flash-player.
For example if i use the flash "Media Encoder 2" and capture a sample.flv
everything is fine (i mean for the delivery)
For that reason i tried to decode and then encode again the flv files by using
ffmpeg but the input codec is not supported by ffmpeg. On the other hand a file
which is captured by "Media Encoder 2" can be transcoded by ffmpeg and they
have (Video: vp6f codec)

Does anyone have more experience on this issue?

Thank you very much!!