Hi Daniel, I will try and answer some of these.
On 7/7/06, electroteque <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, firstly Id like to say, well done for the open source addition of a > flash media server. We are wanting to move away from using Windows > Media, because of the lack of support for other browsers/platforms than > IE/PC, and start streaming Flash VOD content and webcam/video > conferencing applications. Very cool! It sounds like Red5 would be a good fit. We are still in the early stages though, so if you have some time and patience to get things going it will work fine for you guys. > > I had a few questions to ask, basically is there any kind of > administration/server monitoring console available for RED5 yet ?, A very simple web based http log / debug console (XML/RPC based) implementation of this is coming in 0.5. Expect to see a release candidate next Monday with an official version soon to follow after that. > just > like with the windows media console snap-in which lets you edit its > properties. Not even the Flash Media Server lets you do this, its just > a monitoring admin application, there is an admin API which requires > you to code your own admin interface and for that kind of money > ($4500USD) you would expect one supplied, like the windows media > snap-in it comes supplied with the windows server they would be nuts to > expect you to use their C# .NET API for instance to code your own > admin, even though every single part of the server is exposed via a > scriptable .NET API which is nice. > > Im assuming ever part of this server is full scriptable and extendable > via java which is using the spring framework ? Correct. > This would mean then, > that the differences between the application code for the flash media > server is in actionscript2/3 and the code used for server side > applications in RED5 is java based, but Im assuming they both hold the > same principles, possibly using similar package names etc ? > Similar but not the same. Luke Hubbard has worked very hard to create a very usable and intuitive API for building Red5 applications. This can of course do all that FMS can do, but with more flexibility and the Strong typing that Java gives you. If it's not enough as is (highly doubtful for most situations), then you can always extend and change it to your needs. > Ideally we need to build a VOD server side playlist when a webcam is > not showing and then when a webcam is on, it will switch to the > stream-name of the webcam from the playlist and update all the clients, > and then when it stops broadcasting and disconnects it will return back > the VOD playlist. > This seems doable. > The live stream also needs to be archived on the server during that > period, is there any application examples in RED5 which shows how to > create server side playlists and archive live streams ? Not exact examples of this, but there are plenty in the distribution that can get you started. Feel free to try it out and ask more specific questions on the list and I'm sure people can help you get there. > In windows > media broadcast publishing points (application end points) can be setup > with a server side playlist which points to VOD content in a directory > which will play the files then switch to the next element in the > playlist which is the webcam broadcast publishing point (application > point) when it is turned on by the encoder, so yes i guess can RED5 > switche to the next xml element which is connecting to the webcam > application on some local protocol as with windows media > lpp://theapp. Hmmm, I'm not familiar with Windows Media server, so I'm a little confused here. however, setting up an application with Red5 to do switching between live streams and prerecorded ones like this doesn't seem too difficult. > > Our other question was regarding logging, I noticed log4j is the logger > of choice, which is a great tool, ive used that aswell as log4net. Is > it able to use W3C style formatting, which is then easily parsable > using the LogParser library for .NET ? This will mean there is not much > migration required with our current setup which parses windows media > logs in W3C format for collecting bandwidth used from each publishing > point (stream name/ application). > Not sure about this. Sorry. > The final question is, how can we replicate windows media publishing > points which separate and individualize streams which is useful for > logging people separately, and how is some kind of authentication > plugin able to be setup on each "publishing point" to only enable for > instance a website to access it via a webpage using some kind of key > authentication, im assuming session keys can be built into the java > application , so it prevents stuff like hot-linking. > > Regarding hot-linking, i had built a session based system to try and > keep malicious users out of getting access to the video-links sent to a > windows media object, however as it was streamed based, the only way to > get the url to output when loaded in the plugin was outputting the link > to the server via an asx playlist or whatever, using packet sniffers > this was easy to find, even the player exposed the url. > We are working on security and these types of concerns in the 0.6 release. Please tell us more about what you are looking for, and hopefully we can add it. > On testing flash video with connections to the media server I was able > to obtain the media server url, application and stream-name exposed in > the metadata, and load the stream in a test receiver projector > application. So I cannot see how macromedia/adobe can claim flash video > is secure maybe progressive downloadable media accessed via a proxy > script and sessions yes, so my question here would be what kind of > communication can be enabled to Red5 to not expose this information or > use some kind of key authentication calling an application method to > not expose some information. We are stuck using RTMP and delivering to the Flash player too, so I'm not sure if we can improve upon this. However, I'm by no means an expert on RTMP and FLV media, so I think this is best left to Luke, Steven or Joachim to answer. > > We offer free and paid services, so obviously the free stuff isn't a > problem, but being able to packet sniff exposed information in flash > makes you wonder. > > Im sorry about the long set of questions, it was needed, as we've had > to ditch Adobe being they were rude and arrogant in returning technical > information like my questions above and sales quotes to a possible > customer which they have lost. Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I am glad however, that you are considering using Red5. > > My preference is to support open source firstly at all times, I can > even convince my boss to donate a fair sum of money if he is happy with > it considering the stupid license for FMS. Great! We aren't currently setup to accept donations, but this is something that we will be addressing very soon. > My boss is fascinating over > Adobe's origin/edge load balanced FMS systems, would there be an easy > way to kludge something similar in RED5 using a load balancer to a few > machines accessing a shared network drive on a video content server for > the content etc ? Load balancing schemes are certainly in the works and we hope to have solutions or at the very least recommendations on how to do it soon. > > Let me know, and sorry about the essay thanks. > Well I appreciate your well thought out questions. Perhaps others can learn from this as well. That's the whole idea behind the mailing list anyway. Others, please feel free to correct anything that I may have said in error and add to the comments. Take care, Chris Allen Red5 Co-Project Manager _______________________________________________ Red5 mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/red5_osflash.org
