AVChat (blog)

Lisa Larson Kelly has a great video up on Adobe Tv explaining the basics behind delivering prerecorded video using the Flash Platform.

In this short video tutorial you will learn about:

• video codecs and video file types supported by the Flash Platform
• delivery options (streaming vs. progressive)
• what software you can use to encode Flash Video
• where your video files can play (in a webpage using the Flash Player, AIR apps, Adobe Media Player)
• what makes up a simple flash video player

You can watch the video tutorial on the Adobe Tv website by following this link.

Adobe TV is a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products.

Both AVChat and AVConference load the words and phrases used in the admin and user interfaces from external .xml files. These .xml files are plain text files that can be edited with any text editor.

In order to change a word in the interfaces, to translate the entire interface in another language or to change the initial welcome message you just need to edit these files and change whatever you need!

You will find these .xml files in the /en/ folder:

• en/index_en.xml for the user interface texts
• en/admin_en.xml for the admin interface texts

If you are using the chat software as a Joomla component, the files are most probably in components/com_avchat/en/ .

IMPORTANT: After editing the .xml files and uploading them back to your web server, make sure you refresh a few times the chat software so that the Flash Player picks up the new versions.

Future versions of our chat software will support having several such .xml files for each interface. This way you will be able to add one .xml file for each language you want to offer to your visitors.

By default Red5 0.7.0 stores its logs into the log folder (/opt/red5/log/ on Linux or C:\Program Files\Red5\log\ on Windows) but unless you are running Red5 as a service on Windows you will never see any log files in that folder.

Here is what you need to do:

• make sure the log folder mentioned above exists and it is writable. If you compile Red5 yourself the log folder is not created, you need to manually create it.
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the path for the red5 general log from: ../log/red5.log to: log/red5.log (leave the path unchanged if you are running Red5 as a service on Windows)
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the path for the error log from: ../log/error.log to: log/error.log (leave the path unchanged if you are running Red5 as a service on Windows )
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the logging level for the org.red5.server.net.rtmp.RTMPHandler logger from OFF to ALL . This will ensure any errors that happen while a user is connecting to the Red5 server are properly logged in the log files.

There you go, you should now Restart the Red5 server and look for your newly created logs in Red5/log.

This file: Red5/conf/logback.xml controls the logging for the entire Red5 server, but Red5 applications might have their own logging configuration file. Such a file (if any ) should be located at Red5/webapps/application_name/WEB-INF/classes/logback.xml .

Things might change in future versions of Red5 so I will keep this post updated

We got a lot of questions regarding the possibility of screen sharing so here you go, a simple public explanation:

Screen sharing is possible in Flash video chat applications by using third party screen sharing drivers. What these drivers do is they simulate a web cam that uses the desktop screen as a video feed.

There are 3 such drivers right now:

• VH Screen Capture Driver (http://www.hmelyoff.com/index.php?section=8) which is free for private use.
• the Live Output feature present in the Camtasia Recorder that ships with Camtasia Studio (http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasiatrial.asp). Camtasia Studio is a comercial sofware and the actual bundle contains much more than just the Camtasia Recorder.
• UScreenCapture (http://umediaserver.net/umediaserver/download.html), freeware for any use

There are several important differences between the 3 drivers above but that will probably make the subject of another future post.

For one to share his screen in a Flash video chat application he would have to install one of those drivers, then login into the chat software and change his video capture driver (right click->settings->video tab) to the newly installed screen sharing driver. This way when he will start his webcam the images/frames will come from the screen sharing driver.

All drivers above will work just fine with both AVChat and AVConference.

Here are 3 tips for when doing screen sharing in a Flash video chat application:

• use 2 monitors: on one you put the application, window or element that you want to share, on the other you put the Flash video chat application which most probably will also display your screen video feed using the screen-share driver.
• increase the captured video resolution in your screen sharing video chat software to at least 320×240. When sharing areas of your screen smaller than 320×240 it will be very difficult for your viewers to keep track of the elements on your screen.
• There is a difference between the area (resolution) requested by your video chat software from the driver and the area (resolution) which is captured by the screen sharing drivers. The screen sharing driver might capture the entire screen, but the video chat software might request only a 640×480 area. In this case the driver might 1) stretch down the whole screen to fit 640×480 or 2) provide only the 640×480 area around the mouse (VH) or 3) provide only the 640×480 area around the center of the screen (Live Output and UScreenCapture).

It also worth mentioning here that Adobe has a special version of the Flash Player which does screen sharing out of the box. This special version is only available when used with their BRIO application/service available now in beta on labs.adobe.com. So if you want to do screen sharing, without using a third party driver, directly from a Flash Player application right now you are limited to using BRIO.

May 22, 2008 update: UScreenCapture added to the list.

Our team has finally finished the work on a new product we will be offering from now on. It is a bundle actually and it contains:

• a flash video recorder to record video and audio on your website from your users
• a flash audio/video player to playback the recorded audio/video

You will be able to use any Flash video player out there to play back the recorded audio & video files, the player included is offered together with the recorder so that we can provide an integrated solution.

The software bundle is priced at $199/domain.

Find out more about the product on the AVRecorder bundle product page and let us know what you think.

Adobe has released yesterday Flash Media Encoder 2.5.

FME 2.5 adds support for pushing high quality h.264 video streams to the Flash Media Server (or to CDN’s).

You can also push AAC audio streams if you purchase this AAC Encoding plugin for FME from MainConcept.

FME 2.5 also adds a few neat features like command-line control, auto-restart after system restarts and a auto-adjust feature that enables you to maintain a high-quality video stream in uncertain network conditions.

FME 2.5 can be downloaded for free from the Adobe website but it is currently only available for Windows.

Also I want to remind you that AVConference can display a video/audio stream coming from FME via FMS. Users will see the video stream coming from FME just as another user in the users list. You can read more details about this feature here.

Using FMS3 and FME 2.5 you will now be able to push high quality video streams to your users logged into AVConference. Some of our customers are using a similar setup to push video feeds from classrooms, training sessions and studio interviews.

More links:
FME product page on the Adobe website

Adobe has released today Flash Media Server 3.

FMS 3 is available in 3 editions:

1. Flash Media Streaming Server ($995)
2. Flash Media Interactive Server ($4500)
3. Flash Media Development Server (free, 10 simultaneous connections limit)

You can find a side by side comparison of the 3 editions here but the most important new features from my opinion are:

1. Limitations on bandwidth and connections limit have been lifted
2. More secure content delivery (rtmpe, swf hashing)
3. H.264 video and HE-AAC audio
4. Audio/Video stream delivery to Flash Lite 3
5. Major improvements in performance
6. AMF3 support and new plugin arhitecture

AVChat and AVConference should work without any issues with FMS3 as a media server should you choose to use it.

More links:
Flash Media Server 3 Product Page on the Adobe website
Flash Media Development Server download page (you need an Adobe account)
FMS3 Developer Center on the Adobe website

AVChat 2.1 and AVConference 1.1 are now fully compatible with the free open source Red5 media server. Absolutely all the features in both softwares are implemented in the new Red5 versions.

Red5 is a free, open source, Java based, alternative to Adobe’s Flash Media Server. Altough the server is in pre-alpha there are many production-ready applications that work on Red5 and many have chosen to use Red5 because its free and open source.

To install Red5 you need a dedicated server. You can not install Red5 on a shared hosting plan. Red5 is available for both Windows and Linux. You can find more info about it here:http://osflash.org/red5

Until now AVChat 2 and AVConference worked only with Adobe’s Flash Media Server.

To purchase AVChat 2 or AVConference on Red5 email us after the purchase and let us know you want the Red5 version.

If you have already purchased AVChat 2 or AVConference email us and we will send you the proper Red5 files for your licensed domain.

All tutorials and support material on the website will now be updated to include Red5 specific info.

We have listened to your requests and the new versions of our main software products include a lot of requested features:

Most important AVChat 2.1 features:

• all elements on all screens align (login,main screen,etc…) to center when resized
• gender option in login screen can be disabled
• all audio/video streams can be recorded in .flv files on the FMS server for logging/later viewing
• you can limit the admin features (disable ban, disable kick, disable viewing private PM’s)
• xml users and rooms list is generated on the web server
• plain text file with number of logged in users is generated on the web server

Full list of bug fixes and changes in the change log.

For more info on AVChat 2 you can check the AVChat 2.1 product page.

Most important AVConference 1.1 features:

• all elements on all screens align (login,main screen,etc…) to center when resized
• gender option in login screen can be disabled
• all audio/video streams can be recorded in .flv files on the FMS server for logging/later viewing
• you can limit the admin features (disable ban, disable kick, disable viewing private PM’s)
• xml users list is generated on the web server for each room
• plain text file with number of logged in users is generated on the web serve

Full list of bug fixes and changes in the change log.

For more info on AVConferece you can check the AVConference 1.1 product page.

Upgrade information for previous customers:

All previous customers of AVChat 2 or AVConference please contact us at contact@avchat.net and ask for the upgrade, you will receive the new versions for free within 24 hours.

We’ve got a lot of emails on these topics recently so we decided to clarify the issue here.

Adobe announced support for h.264 video in Flash Player in August 2007 in this press release.

Adobe announced Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Media Encoder 2 in September 2007 in this press release.

Prerecorded h.264 video

Right now the latest Flash Player Beta Update available on Adobe Labs only supports playing/decoding of prerecorded video files encoded with h.264 and delivered using progressive download.

To deliver prerecorded h.264 video files to Flash Player applications (video players, etc…) using streaming we need to wait for Flash Media Server 3 due to be released in Spring 2008.

Flash Media Server 2 can only stream prerecorded .flv files encoded with ON2’s VP6 or with Sorenson Spark.

Live h.264 video

FME2-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

To deliver live h.264 video to Flash Player Applications (live video players, AVChat, etc…) we need to wait for Flash Media Encoder 2 and Flash Media Server 3 to be released. At that time we will be able to push live h.264 video feeds from FME2 to Flash Player Apps via FMS3.
Flash Player apps-> FMS3 ->Flash Player apps

If Flash Player will ever support encoding live video with h.264, then  we will be able to deliver live h.264 video feeds from Flash Player applications (video chat software, etc.) to Flash Player apps (video players, etc.) using FMS3 as a streaming server!

Right now Flash Player can only encode live video using the older Sorenson Spark video codec.