Live streaming / Webcam on a website - questions

[Pryse]

Hello everyone,

Hope I’m posting this in the most appropriate forum….

A friend of mine wants to setup a live streaming web cam with sound output for display on his business’ website.

He asked me to investigate what software and hardware requirements would be needed to create this resource….

I have made the basic assumption that he requires:

1). Picture recording – webcam etc.
2). Sound recording – microphone etc.
3). Streaming software.
4). Space on his website to display content.

Can anyone outline the basic software and hardware requirements for creating such set up?

Or

Point me to any useful online resources on this subject.

Any responses will be greatly appreciated….

Many Thanks

Pryse

[hartken]

It is pretty easy to do. You just need to know the way it works.

The webcam feed first goes to your ISP, and then it is broadcasted over their internet connection. Realtime webcam is very misleading. There is always a delay, as it has to go to your host first.

What happens is your webcam records you, and then your computer sends the feed to your host. Then the host broadcasts everything.

All you need is your IP address and the host should tell you how to do the rest. If you have a dynamic IP, there is a software solution to get around that.

There are special hosts for video streaming. They are a lot more expensive then the regular hosts and they will be able to help you with the rest. Also be sure to check the terms of use. If you put something on a host that violates it, like adult content, they will shut you down and not refund your money. There are special hosts for everything.

[hartken]

Also I forgot to add that it is very expensive to do this. A normal host for me is about 10-20 a month. The base cost for a webstream host if you want to broadcast anything is $40.00 a month. Also they have bandwidth limitations where they charge a set fee, like $0.25 for bandwidth that goes over your limit.

I've seen people who don't know what they are doing, and leave their webcam on broadcasting a wall, and end up with a $300.00 bill and then get mad at the host because they didn't read their contract. Think of it like a cellphone provider.

[Pryse]

Thanks for the info hartken... are you able to post any links to useful websites?

Much appreciated...

Regards

[hartken]

Well, pretty much web stream uses the same principal. Some just embed Windows Media Player into it. That is the simplest solution.You should be able to just use the < object > tag (remove spaces. pcmech should look into the htmlentities() PHP function to avoid this) in HTML, and the browser will load the default media player. Just use the IP your host provides you for the source url and it should work.

http://www.mioplanet.com/rsc/embed_mediaplayer.htm

You can use Flash but you got to know actionscript, and I think you need Flash Media Server installed on the host. It will let you make the player the way you want it with volume controls, but I just like letting the volume controls be used by the operating system. My favortie method is to use a transparent flash overlay movie for design on top of embedded video playing in media player. I think you can use parameters in the embed tag so you don't have to show the controls like volume or play, or you can just adjust the movie so it hides them, and then you can have animation going around you movie for design:

http://www.webworksite.com/overlay.shtml