onStream – The Broadcasting Machine
onStream – The Broadcasting Machine is the name of my latest flash project. Slogan says: “Broadcast LIVE video to your friends or the whole world from a computer or mobile. Watch other people broadcasting their webcamera, conferences, shows or movies.” With this flash application you can broadcast your webcamera, tv card, desktop or movies (read the section “What can be broadcasted?”). With different broadcasting settings you can broadcast to unlimited number of viewers as well as make private videochats. Based on your connection speed, choose appropriate quality for your broadcasts from 320×160 px webcamera resolution with 11kHz sound sampling up to high definition broadcasts.
The application is located on http://onstream.yoz.sk and there also exist a facebook application http://apps.facebook.com/onstream/. You can also publish and run the application from facebook newsfeed stream.
UI, requirements, technology
I have created custom UI components that easily works on ordinary PCs (mouse controlled) as well as on touch devices. You can switch the whole app or just one channel into fullscreen. Targeting Flash Player 10.1, you are able to use this application even on your android phones. The technology behind the app uses RTMFP protocol that use Flash Player for P2P communication between users (see protocol requirements). Together the Flash Player 10.1 and RTMFP let you create multicast streaming, what is expected to work on large streaming groups.
Broadcasting modes
- Public / Private – With public mode anyone can search for your channel (based on channel name or description), while in private mode only people with correct link may join.
- Broadcast / Video Chat – Broadcast your channel to unlimited number of viewers or select video chat mode where anyone who joins channel see and broadcast each other. Use broadcast mode for your live tweets, conferences, video or sound streaming.
What can be broadcasted?
- Webcamera & Microphone – By default, you can select all your system installed webcameras and microphones.
- MP3s / PC sounds – if your soundcard driver supports “Stereo-Mix” (“Mono-mix” “Wave Out”, “What U Hear”…), just make it as default sound source instead of your microphone
- TV card – If you have one, plug it in and you should see your tv car in list (based on driver details).
- Desktop / Movies / Images – There is some software available that let you broadcast your pc desktop, movies or images etc. My personal favourite is VH Toolkit (freeware) but there are also simplier alternatives like ManyCam (free), Fake Webcam (paid)…
Publishing channels
Once the broadcasting channel is created, there are several ways viewers notice:
- Search – If the channel is in public mode, anyone can search / list the channel in the search section of the app.
- Link – Any channel has its own unique link, click clipboard icon to copy this link into system clipboard and share link with your friends.
- Facebook – Click facebook icon to publish the channel directly into your facebook newsfeed.
Screencast
YouTube Creating broadcast type channel & searching channel
YouTube Creating video chat channel & entering video chat channel
YouTube Publishing channel to facebook
Great stuff Jozef! What’s behind the scenes, do you use Adobe Stratus and/or Red5?
@Og2t, thanks. Behind the scenes is stratus/RTMFP. With fp 10.1 you can multicast p2p using NetGroups, cool feature. backend is php+mysql – storing channel info and screenshots.
This is really good! Easy to use and well thought.