Walkthrough 3: Testing the DVR-enabled live stream

In this walkthrough you will:

• Publish a live DVR-enabled stream
• Play back a DVR-enabled stream: play from beginning, go to live, instant replay, and seek within the DVR cache

Note: This walkthrough is a continuation from Walkthrough 2: Consuming a DVR-enabled live stream. You can either use the same files used in that walkthrough or open a fresh starting set from the {start files}/hands-on/DVR-Testing/start/ directory.

1. If you don't already have the DVR-FlashConsumerPublisher movie running, test it. Click the Publish button to start recording the video.
2. Roll over the second video display and click the Play button to view the recording stream.
3. Now you can adjust the replay time with the NumericStepper. Click Replay to rewind the video the selected amount. Clicking View Live returns you to the end of the recorded stream (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Final version of the video player application

Walkthrough 3 illustrates the very basics of live DVR (publish and playback). It also leaves many issues exposed in the general workflow and management of a live and live DVR application.

With the addition of live DVR, the workflow for publishing, viewing, and managing a live event has expanded. The key points in the process to consider are the following:

• Stream start: When the feed begins
• Encode start: When the encoder begins
• DVR start: When the server recording begins
• Event start: When users can start viewing and how far back they can go

Where to go from here

Live DVR functionality has widespread uses and provides an extensible system on which to build. The basic implementation is very simple, because at its core it is really just extending the playback capabilities of recorded content to encompass content that is currently live as well.

With this enhancement, Adobe is taking steps to reaffirm its lead in the video streaming space and offer the mechanisms needed to help bridge the gap between television and the web. Although live DVR functionality does require Flash Media Interactive Server, because it needs to record video on the server, there are no new client Flash Player requirements to get this delivered to users. This feature may not be beneficial to everyone, but for the many use cases to which it pertains, live DVR offers great value without a major shift in existing process or management.

Part 2 of this series shows you how to implement the new DVRCast server-side sample application from Adobe, as well as stream and record content with Flash Media Live Encoder 3 and play back the live DVR content with the FLVPlayback 2.5 component.

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