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The Basics
Live streaming is not an out-of-the-box
solution. It requires to be setup and then tweaked for optimization.
A whole lot of people who purchase our software, often ask
us "How do I stream live with your software?". This
article is for them to provide a proper understanding of how
live streaming works.
Getting Started (What You Need)
Here is a checklist of what you need, before you stream
live, the Flash way!
1. A video source, example a web camera or an IP Camera or
a normal video camera. In all cases, the camera should come
with it's own software. Install this software on your PC and
then attach your camera to your PC or laptop. You would be
able to view the live video on your PC. This is the first
step. If you cannot view the video on your PC, your camera
has not been setup properly. So the first thing you need is
a video source and it's corresponding software.
2. The next step is to send this live video feed to a server
which will relay the same feed on internet. For this step,
you would need a live encoder. The live encoder, while being
installed on your PC will accept the feed from your camera
and then send this feed to the broadcast/media server (described
below). The Adobe Live Encoder is a free live encoder and
can be downloaded from here.
3. The server that accepts the feed from the live encoder
and then relays or broadcasts the feed is known as a "Streaming
Server" or a "Media Server". It is different
from a normal web server that hosts your websites. The Streaming
Servers are equipped with a special software that are capable
accepting the feed from the encoder and then broadcasting
it as a audio-video live stream using real time message protocol.
(RTMP). For this step, you have to decide between a few options.
You can install a server side media streaming software like
Flash Media Server or Wowza or Red5 on a dedicated webserver
or you can hire a service that provides you an account to
use these through their servers. The later is suggested for
small scale live streaming, since FMS and Wowza is costly
(> $2400). Red5 is free, but, has issues. It is also very
resource hungry. That is, you need good processors and large
RAMs on your server to run Red5 smoothly.You can also choose
Amazon EC2, that provides a "Pay as you use" feature.
We can guide or help you to choose a media server or media
server service that we feel appropriate for you after listening
to your live streaming needs.
4. Finally to display this live stream on your website, you
would need a video player that is capable of playing this
live stream. This video player will be embedded on your HTML
webpage and should be uploaded with your webpage on your normal
webserver or webhost. To setup this player manually, can be
a difficult task and that's EasyFLV comes handy. All you have
to do is provide the inputs on the software, and it will generate
the live video player with the corresponding code for you.
Upload the video player with your HTML and you are done.
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