I am an amatuer web programmer. I manage our website for my restaurant.
[url]www.KitesLive.com[/url] I have been trying to get a stable streaming webcam on our
site for some time without having to pay some ridiculuos amount to a third
party provider.

I hope this helps someone else, because it took me forever to find all these
steps

Step 1: Set up the webcam. I took a simple surveillance camera and hooked it
to an inexpensive video capture PCI card on my computer at the restaurant that
I use to provide free WiFi for my customers. The video capture card came with
some drivers which allowed me to connect to the camera. (Note: I was a little
disappointed with picture quality, but I think that was a case of you get what
you pay for)

Step 2: Flash Media Encoder. You can download it free from adobe at
[url]www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder[/url]. I installed it on my
computer (above) with the webcam hooked up to it. Once installed run the
program. The audio and video settings are fairly straight forward. The output
side was a little tricky for a while. In the box labeled FMS URL enter
rtmp://localhost/live/instance1. Unselect save to file if checked. In the box
labeled Stream: enter livestream For now, you are done with the Media Encoder.

Step 3: Flash Media Server. You can download the free Development version from
adobe at [url]http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediastreaming[/url]. I also installed it
on the same computer as above. There are some limitations to it, but it worked
for me. Take a look at this article for help installing it.
[url]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/beginner_installing_fm3.ht[/url]
ml Once it is installed and running, I didn't mess with it. You can log into
the admin console to see the connections and performance if you like. In the
install process there is a point that deals with the port for remote access.
Keep track of this number. The default is 1935.

Step 4: Go back to the Media Encoder. Click on the 'Connect' button to make
the connection from the encoder to the Media Server. If everthing is working
correctly the button will switch to a 'disconnect' button. Finally, click the
'Start' button to start encoding the video feed to the Media Server.

Step 5: Find you ip address. If you don't have a static IP address you will
need to contact your service provider to find out how to get one. Without a
static IP you won't be able to put the address in the Flash Player, because at
some point your ip will change. You can find you IP address by going to
[url]http://www.whatismyip.com[/url].

Step 6: Open the Ports. First find the details how to open or port forward for
your router. I found a lot of help on this website.
[url]http://portforward.com/routers.htm[/url] I had never done port forwarding before.
Basically in a nutshell, when you type in an address on a remote browser like
24.248.189.201:1935 the browser goes to your STATIC ip 24.248.189.201 then
checks to see if port 1935 is open. If it is open, it follows the rules set by
your router to reroute the browser connection to a local ip (example:
192.168.0.150) address which connects to another application, in this case
Flash Media Server.

If you are using a firewall you will need to set it up to allow remote access
to the port. For windowsXP, in the control panel you can open the windows
firewall. There is a tab to add expections. On that tab there is a button to
add a port. Give it a name for you to recoginize and type in the port number
that you wrote down while installing the Flash Media Server. It took me a long
time to find info about this little step. Every port you open on your router
has to have the same port opened on your firewall or nothing will work.

Step 7: Build the Flash Player.
[url]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/webcasting_fme.html[/url] is a
great article on building the flash player. For my situation the player is
loaded on a public access webpage on a completely different webserver. Here is
a an example of the rtmp: string I used to make the connection through the
router and firewall to my Flash Media Server on the computer at my restaurant.
(of course, I did change a couple of numbers for securtity sake)
rtmpt://24.248.189.201:1935/live/instance1/livestream. Now lets break the
string down. 1. rtmpt converts the protocol to http so the router will accept
it. 2. your static ip again, 24.248.189.201 3. your open port, 1935 4. the
location of the stream, /live 5. the folder of the instance, /instance1 6. the
name of the streaming file, /livestream

Step 8. Publish your player with Flash. Load the html file to your webserver
and preview it in a browser. It worked for me.



Note: I am still trying to find the actionscript to handle trying to access
this webpage when you are actually on the same domain as Flash Media Server.
Something about that causes Explorer to freeze up. If I find it soon I will try
to add it here.



Good Luck.