MyGeekProject

So I was amazed how long it took me to finally get this up and working. Actually I am quite embarrassed once I figure it out how easy it is. I scoured the web for days looking for any tips on how to get this going until I installed all of the plugin information and got things going. Before we begin you should know that I am doing this via Eclipse and a few plugins so if you don’t have this stuff at your beck and call then stop now and keep looking.

I am assuming that you checked out my previous post for the installing Eclipse and also the Red5 plugins? Here are the links to the posts:

For Mac OS X. Includes the Flex plugin as well please download the red5 plugin like linux below:
http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=506

For Linux Ubuntu (Should work for other flavors). Install eclipse and then just add the plugin:
http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=498

Ok now we need to get the Red5 Recorder software which is at this link:
http://www.red5-recorder.com/

Now open eclipse and after you have everything installed. Read and watch the video in this post. Make sure read the part about building the application, “OK, now for building the applications…”. I am going to breeze through this pretty fast. Here is the post to read: http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=506

Ok so here we go really fast…

Create a new Dynamic Web Project and call it “red5recorder”. Your now have two main folders, one ends in “Client”. Expand the Eclipse project “red5recorderClient” so you see the structure. Note that the red5recorder.zip file you download loaded has the same set of files. I opened up (2) windows and just removed all of the files from the eclipse project and replaced them from the “red5recorder.zip”. I then did a refresh in eclipse just to make sure it could see the files I swapped out.

Now you will need to Right click on the main red5recorder project (not the red5recorderClient) and then run as Server. It will go through and compile everything for you and move a copy of the files into the Red5 Server. Then Right click on the red5recorderClient and either Run as OR debug as. The application should work fine and the application should be working as planned.

I will post more about this coming up very soon and how to embed this into a webpage and also into a form. Keep watching for more posts.

I am working on a video capture video kioski so I need to either purchase thousands of dollars of Adobe Flash Media Server software or I have been looking at Red5 Open Source Flash Server which is free. Now I don’t want to knock the great software Adobe has but the amount of traffic and rev up time don’t allow me to go with the expensive option. So let’s get going with Red5.

I got the software from: http://osflash.org/red5

Then I took my fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 (Desktop Edition) and ran the Add/Remove Software application. I searched for JAVA and installed: OpenJDK Java 6 Web Start and the OpenJDK Java 6 Runtime.

Once I got the JAVA install I unzipped the software on the desktop and then ran the following commands in terminal: (As root/su)

tar -xzvf release.tar.gz
cd release
export RED5_HOME=`pwd`
./red5.sh

The terminal window will look locked but the server is running in the background and if you want to stop the server press the CNTRL+C and the server will quit.

Once you get the server running you can verify it is fully working by going to your local machine: http://localhost:5080/installer

I will post the red5 video recorder once I get it working with the server setup. Have fun also check out some of these really cool things you can build with Red5: http://osflash.org/red5/showcase

I finally got this to work!! Here is how I did it.

Hardware: HP a1140n with firewire 6-pin and Canon zr45 with 4-pin firewire. I have everything hooked up and running Ubuntu 8.10.

Software: ffmpeg [http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=163], ffserver config file [http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=420, dvconnect [http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=409, DV Live capture instructions [http://www.mygeekproject.com/?p=433

Once you have everything in place and you tested the live capture of the video then you can continue. Remember that you need to either have a tape playing in the camera or have the camera turned on to start recording for dvconnect to work. I ran through all of the examples first and made sure I could grab the video, transcode the videos to flash before I got this all to work properly.

ffserver.conf [CHANGES]:

Note that you may experience problem with the config file and the output, fear not we will get through this. I commented out the MPG streaming and will eventually give you a great mp4 config as I am still working on it. Below is the FLV code I got working and you can change the information as you see fit for the bit rates etc. Again I commented out all of the mpg stuff in the conf file.

# FLV streaming
 
<Stream output.flv>
Feed feed1.ffm
VideoBitRate 1024
VideoBufferSize 128
Format flv
VideoSize 352x288
VideoFrameRate 24
VideoQMin  3
VideoQMax  3
</Stream>

You can add it right after the sample scripts that is where I added it. In terminal start up the ffserver under root:

ffserver

Now for the following terminal scripts I opened 2 windows and logged in as root [su]

Terminal Window (1) – dvconnect (You should have followed the direction above and tested this already)

dvconnect -- >/tmp/fifo.rawdv

NOTE: it looks like the terminal window has been stuck but it is not, it is waiting on the video stream. Might want to have the video camera on or video running before you issue this command. Trial and error.

Terminal Window (2) – Sending the video to ffserver

ffmpeg -f dv -i /tmp/fifo.rawdv http://localhost:8090/feed1.ffm

NOTE: if you have problem with this command then either the video is not running or something weird might have happened, look at the terminal window (1) and see if it kicked out, it has to be running in order to capture the video to FIFO.

Now with your browser you should be able to see if everything is running from ffserver http://localhost:8090/stat.html. From this page you should see that a stream is waiting on someone to connect.

Watching the video from FLV in a website. I suggest you get the flowplayer from http://www.flowplayer.org. It is the best in my opinion. They have a sample page that you can hook up your FLV from this ffserver to the flowplayer and watch the live stream. Good luck.