http://mbebenita.github.com/Broadway/broadway.html

So I decided to give it a try. To see if I could in fact get the server up and running on my ubuntu machine. To my surprise, the standard install scripts worked flawlessly.

Here are the steps:

1. Download the development server
2. unzip FlashMediaDevServer_4_5_all.zip
3. cd [path_to_unzipped_files]/linux
4. tar -zxvf FlashMediaServer4.5_x64.tar.gz
5. cd FMS_4_5_0_r297
6. sudo ./installFMS
7. follow the onscreen instructions
8. point your browser to your machines IP address.

Today the application is finally complete and has been accepted into the app store.

While creating this app I used the latest version of Flash Builder Burrito. I found it a lot easier to use vs Flash Builder 4. The new built-in mobile wizards and device simulators were very helpful. Also the flex framework really worked great with layout and positioning as it always does. The only real gotcha with flex was how skinning works on mobile devices vs desktop apps. Everything else was a breeze.

Thanks Adobe and Blackberry for making such great tools that work!

The new features include :

• Full 64-bit support NEW
• Enhanced playback experience NEW
• Faster switching with RTMP Dynamic Streaming ENHANCED
• Absolute timecode NEW
• RTMP quality of service (QoS) improvements ENHANCED
• Greater live streaming security NEW
• Simplified player development ENHANCED
• Multiuser experiences for your audience ENHANCED
• AMF3 support
• Rich server-side scripting support
• Peer-assisted networking
• Application-level multicast NEW
• IP multicast broadcast NEW
• Enhanced buffer NEW
• Faster switching with RTMP Dynamic Streaming ENHANCED
• Absolute timecode NEW
• RTMP quality of service (QoS) improvements ENHANCED
• Protected multiprotocol streaming ENHANCED
• H.264 video and HE-AAC audio
• Live HD video streaming
• RTMP Dynamic Streaming ENHANCED
• Protected content delivery ENHANCED
• DVR functionality
• MPEG-4 video recording
• H.264 video and HE-AAC audio
• Live HD/H.264 video streaming
• Bandwidth detection
• Protected streaming support ENHANCED
• Full 64-bit support NEW
• Simplified player development ENHANCED
• Simple publishing workflows
• Integrated HTTP server
• Consistent delivery across all screens
• Ultimate efficiency NEW
• Plug-in architecture
• Easier implementation ENHANCED
• Stream splitting
• Server redirection handling
• Logging

< Flash Media 4 Server />
< Developer Download />

Finally a good demo of Adobe’s new HTTP based Dynamic streaming. Can’t wait to dissect this one a bit more. Here is more information about the new feature included in Flash Player 10.1.

• HTTP Dynamic Streaming
• FMF File Manifest Spec
• F4F Parser Info

Can’t wait to come up with an open source solution to this type of streaming.

The other day I finally broke down and ordered a CrystalHD decoder chip. The CrystalHD is a hardware decoder than can decode h.264/AVC, VC1 and Mpeg2 in hardware. It plugs into a PCI-Express 1x slot. You can install it on an older mac mini or an apple tv. I have to say the results were fantastic. With some higher bitrate shows my mini would skip. But no longer with this magnificent little chip. I would recommend it for anyone who is on older hardware and doesn’t want to pay to upgrade their cpu or system in general.

One thing to note is that in order to get it to work with the latest version of osx I had to compile it from source. You can download the source here. If you are installing in osx skip the “install instructions (kext driver)” section and just enter the following into the terminal. this will let the kext load after each reboot.

sudo cp -r BroadcomCrystalHD.kext /System/Library/Extensions/
sudo -S chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/BroadcomCrystalHD.kext
sudo -S chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions/BroadcomCrystalHD.kext

One thing I would like to see if it would ever be possible to use this with FFMPEG. Imagine having the CrystalHD decode the frames and have ffmpeg encode them in another format. This would increase transcoding times significantly since most of the computer resources would be freed. I wonder if any one has tried it out.

Web Sites

1. Learn You Some Erlang
   This is a great resource that keeps getting added to. It’s not completed yet but it’s free and very helpful if you are interested in learning some of the basics.
2. API / Official Docs
   You’ll never get too far without a good reference to available API’s and official Documentation. It takes a bit to get used to but there is a ton of information here including best practices.
3. trapexit.org
   This site has a ton of resources and tutorials.
4. Erlang Factory
   If you can make it out to one of these events I’m sure you would learn a lot. I’ve never been but I’ve heard it’s great. You can find some videos on their site.
5. SpawnLink.com
   Great tutorial series about gen_server.  Start with An Introduction to gen_server: “ErlyBank”

Books

1. ERLANG Programming by Francesco Cesarini and Simon Thompson
   I Reccomend this book for beginners.
2. Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World by Joe Armstrong
   I started reading this book but switched to “ERLANG Programming” Seemed easier to fallow for me and went into more detail that helped benefit me better.

Assuming you have MacPorts installed. Run the following command:
sudo port install erlang

Once that is done you are ready to install Erlyvideo. Go here for up to date install instructions (you will also need git installed).

Finally on to the fun stuff. go to http://localhost:8082/

Assuming everything worked alright you should see the flash content loaded. Go ahead open up terminal and run the following command replacing INPUT_FILE with the file of your choice.

ffmpeg -i INPUT_FILE -re -ac 2 -acodec libfaac -vcodec libx264 -vpre default -s 480x320 -f flv rtmp://localhost:1935/rtmp/test

Now switch back to your browser where you have the erlyvideo page loaded. replace the url at the top of the page with.
rtmp://localhost:1935/rtmp/test

Click on the Connect button.
Then towards the bottom of the page click the Play button.

Congratulations you are now streaming video to erlyvideo!!!

First you will need to download and install Xcode and then MacPorts. Please go here for MacPort download and install instructions.

Once when MacPorts is done being installed you will need to install a few packages. They include yasm, pkgconfig and openssl. So lets begin getting those installed first. Type the following command into terminal and then press enter.
sudo port install yasm pkgconfig openssl

Once when this is complete you will need to download a few extra files. We are going to compile these manually so we make sure we have the latest and greatest.

FAAC v1.28
FAAD2 v2.7
Lame
LIBRTMP
x264 (download the latest build)
FFMPEG 0.6

First you will want to extract each archive. In OSX you can double-click on the archive to extract or else in terminal use the following command.

tar xzf FILE_NAME.tar.gz

Now it’s time to compile each library. Don’t worry its very easy. For the rest of the steps we will only be working in terminal. So open it up and navigate to where you downloaded your files. Mine are located in my Downloads folder.
cd ~/Downloads

Enter the following commands to navigate to your faac folder, configure, compile and install.

cd faac-1.28/
./configure
make
make install

Now to compile Faad

cd ../faad2-2.7/
./configure
make
make install

Lames turn

cd ../lame-3.98.4/
./configure
make
make install

RTMP is a little different.

cd ../rtmpdump-2.2e/
make SYS=MacOSX
make install

Your path to h264 will most likely be different from mine.

cd ../x264-snapshot-20100629-2245/
./configure
make
make install

Finally FFMPEG 0.6. This also requires a few more steps.
cd ../ffmpeg-0.6/
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
./configure --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-libvpx --enable-librtmp
make
make install

Done! now you are ready to encode your file and send it to an RTMP server. I’ve been using the following command to test this.
ffmpeg -i INPUT_FILE -re -ac 2 -acodec libfaac -vcodec libx264 -vpre default -s 480x320 -f flv rtmp://localhost:1935/rtmp/test

Just replace INPUTE_FILE with the video you want to transcode and rtmp://localhost:1935/rtmp/test with the RTMP server you want to publish to. This could be a Flash Media Server, Wowza Server, Red5, Erlyvideo or any other server that supports this functionality.

Enjoy!