IntaCepta
Member
Registered: 25th Mar 02
Location: Mill Hill East, Greater London
User status: Offline
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Hi,
Basically I want to know how feasable this idea is without paying a penny.
Me and a mate at uni got talking about streaming media in general terms, and thought it would be cool if we could have a webcam session and webcasted via a browser, where anyone could view it remotely via the Internet.
I want to have a crack at this, but could do with a bit of advise.
At first i want to keep things simple and use an prerecorded video file to stream rather than webcasting from a live source.
Basically, i want to use the university unix system to host the website (apache webserver). I'll write a webpage to implement a media viewer.
I'll be using RealMedia with RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) (.RM)
The main issue i have is finding someone who don't charge to stream video media?
Does anyone know of any free streaming hosts, where i can set up an account,
I will not be using too much bandwidth, just wanna test a small file.
The TCP connection from server to client is sorted with (socket programming etc).
I'm asking all this now as I think it might be a good idea for a project area for next year. So i'm trying to get any advise as early as possible.
I want to try and make a prototype using a small uncompressed video file, and encode/compress it ready for streaming to multiple clients across the Internet.
If anyone could point me into the right direction, or know of any good sites/tutorials, or simply provide some sound advise, I would be very grateful 
Think thats my longest ever post lol 
[Edited on 30-01-2004 by IntaCepta]
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Fester
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Registered: 9th Oct 01
Location: Lancaster
User status: Offline
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Most webcam streams are done using FTP.
There are loads of programs that you can download to do this:
The program takes a snap from the webcam at x seconds, then FTP's the image off to location a.
Insert a small amount of code into a webpage that points to the image at location a, but with a refresh time of x
et voila 'streaming' webcam. If you set this to something like twice a second you'll get the results you're after.
Very easy to set up, all the progams and code are available for this.
If the live stream isn't an option there will probably be a way of breaking a video down in frames at time increments of your choice, then FTPing these off to location a
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Offline
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Publishing images via FTP will give you discreet frames, not a stream. I used to use Kolban something for the web cam side of things and Gatling FTP to upload the images that Kolban was saving.
Streaming is entirely different and will certainly require the computer with the camera being visible to the outside world or extra software on the intermediary unix machine to spool the stream from the internal connection to the outside world.
I assume you can't install software on the web server?
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waynep
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Registered: 20th Apr 02
Location: london
User status: Offline
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mo check the freeze fm website there doing it , maybe tx in, or drop em an email
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John_C
Member
Registered: 5th Mar 03
Location: South east, Bromley
User status: Offline
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host it on the uni serverss. thats where i host my websites and other pages.
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IntaCepta
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Registered: 25th Mar 02
Location: Mill Hill East, Greater London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Ian
Streaming is entirely different and will certainly require the computer with the camera being visible to the outside world or extra software on the intermediary unix machine to spool the stream from the internal connection to the outside world.
Yes, this is what i had in mind.
I don't want descreet frames sent to an FTP site, i want a continous video stream.
But for now i just want to stream a small movie encoded to .rm, and streamed via a streaming server (can i make/build this like an apache webserver?) I've decided to use Real RTSP to stream the media.
I have a seperate account on the unix system, where i can do whatever i like. I've yet to build apache on the account, but i have done before.
Don't think i can install anything, i'm not sure, but i can always have a few words with admin etc. This shouldn't be a problem i don't think.
just built the server
http://gold.mdx.ac.uk:7883
.
[Edited on 30-01-2004 by IntaCepta]
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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If you want to stream a pre-recorded file, then you can using the quicktime plugin (or media players) on the webpage, that basically loads up the media file and plays it from the server, no need for any ball ache then 
However, live streaming is abit of a git to behonest. If your gonna stream a webcam or a camrecorder (using a capture card etc) then you will need some sort of streaming server that is capable of capture an external device, encoding it and being able to streaming it to people. Personally i would have a windows machine with the webcam (or what ever) connected to it then install Windows Media Server (think thats what it is called, not 100% sure though mate, long time since ive used it) and that will allow you select the input device, either a microphone, camera or both and encode it (codec selectable). Once this is all set up, it will be a simple case of pressing record on the media server and that will start hosting the live feed that you will beable to access via a web address of the computer (eg: mms://feed) or sumthing like that. Then you create a page with a quicktime plugin (or some media player) and get it to link to that feed. 
However, there are loads of otherways to do it Best bet mate is to have a look around the net and other live feeds and see how they are doing them. One cheap way is to get a webcam to chuck out a jpg every 2seconds etc then you can get a java-applet that creates a little window box that refreshes every so long (2 seconds in this case) and updates the view on the viewers screen. its a nice a cheap way of doing it
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IntaCepta
Member
Registered: 25th Mar 02
Location: Mill Hill East, Greater London
User status: Offline
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Bugger!
my uni is running solaris 2.6!
RealServer will not run on 2.7 or 2.8 lol.
Does anyone know where i can get a free shell account with 20mb+ quota?
(linux/freeBSD/solaris2.6+)
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waynep
Member
Registered: 20th Apr 02
Location: london
User status: Offline
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try www.clickherefree.com is a databse full of free webhosts just click boxes to match ur requirments
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IntaCepta
Member
Registered: 25th Mar 02
Location: Mill Hill East, Greater London
User status: Offline
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Can someone take a screenshot of this page please?
http://gold.mdx.ac.uk:7883
I just want to see the stream bitrate in the status bar.
how long does the movie take before it starts playing?
thx
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Offline
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225Kbps
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Tim
Site Administrator
Registered: 21st Apr 00
User status: Offline
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About 8 seconds startup...
And...
225Kbps
[Edited on 01-02-2004 by Tim]
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