Record and host videos on website in PHP and Flash

[vishalraj9]

Hi all,
I wanted to create a facility for users of my website to be able to record videos with sound live on my website and make it immediately available for viewing to others. Visitors will be able to record the video and sound using the Webcam and microphones attached to their system. I wanted to do this in PHP and Flash. I searched exhaustively, but did not find a way to do this. Can someone please point out a solution for this?

Thank you in advance.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

You can't do this exclusively with PHP. You can even get away without using any serverside scripting language at all, it just depends on what you want to do with it.

What you need is a type of media streaming server. The most popular (and expensive) being Flash Media Server, also known as FMS.

There is a free alternative, called Red5. Both will help you do what you need to do. You need to install this software on your server.

There are also hosting providers that can supply you with disk space and bandwidth for tapping into an FMS server, but I don't know any off hand.

[vishalraj9]

Hi,
Thanks a ton for the helpful reply. I tried to get more info on Red5 and it seems that it is built in Java. So I am having a lot of problem in understanding their commands. Do you know of any good tutorials that can help novices like me?

Your help is highly appreciated.

Thank you.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

To use Red5 on a basic level, as in, recording a live video stream, it can be done with no extra coding at all.

Here is an fla put out by the Red5 team to demonstrate recording capabilities: http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/flash...leRecorder.fla

[vishalraj9]

Hi,
Thanks again for your prompt reply. I tried out the recorder, generated the SWF file and recorded myself. But when I tried to play back my recording, it does not work. Neither was I able to find the file where it was stored. The instructions say that the file would be stored in location " webapps/oflaDemo/streams" but there are no such folders available.

Am I doing something wrong here? Or did I not do something at all.

Please let me know. Thank you.