Stream to the Internet

Ryuksapple84

Hey Guys,

I was wondering if some folks here could help me out. I want to create some videos and put them on a website so my coworkers may watch them over the net...

I would like to have them be able to visit a website and choose from about 10 videos and stream them on their browser... what would that look like on the server and development side?

Thanks guys.

Forsaken_GA

It's harder than you think, unfortunately. For starters, you have to decide what format you want to stream in. FLV? h264? Setting up a server to stream is a non trivial task. Your server side options are many, you could use Microsoft's solution (whos name escapes me at the moment), Adobe's Flash Media Server, or if you want to get your nerd on, setup lighttpd with mod_flv_streaming and/or mod_h264 streaming. Apache also has a streaming module, but I've never had good luck with it. This is all assuming the videos you have are in the correct format to begin with. If not, you get to have fun with ffmpeg, or whatever you want to use as an equivalent transcoder.

Then you have to set up a website to actually pull the content. Depending on what you want, that's almost going to certainly involve some coding involved, mostly in the player. The surrounding web page is whatever, you can do the player as a simple embed, but depending on what you want the player to do, you may need to do some custom coding. I've only ever personally used flowplayer, and couldn't even begin to tell you what's involved in customizing it.

Sadly, there's no easy drop in youtube like web apps. If you want easy, you're best off uploading the vids to youtube. Or, just drop em on a web server somewhere and let them download the entire video and play it locally. Otherwise, get ready to spend some time learning more than you ever cared to.