Webcasting live video with Flash Media Live Encoder

Overview of Flash Media Live Encoder

Since its inception, Flash Media Server has supported live video and audio streaming. Now adding Flash Media Live Encoder for encoding live web broadcasts offers two important benefits: the highest quality video supported, and quicker, easier deployment.

Flash Media Live Encoder directly delivers the highest quality supported video by using On2 VP6 encoding. Previously, this was only possible through the use of third-party solutions. Flash Media Live Encoder provides quicker, easier deployment by being a fully featured acquisition and encoding application that natively integrates with Flash Media Server. Previously, the acquisition and encoding functionality had to be custom-coded using the Flash authoring tool.

This article provides a basic overview of using Flash Media Server, Flash Media Live Encoder, and either Flash CS3 Professional or Dreamweaver CS3 to create a live web broadcasting application. Figure 1 presents each of these in context with the other elements of a basic live broadcast.

Figure 1. Live web broadcast using Flash Media Live Encoder

The elements of the basic live broadcast illustrated in Figure 1 are as follows:

• Live event: The subject to be broadcast—business, educational, or political speakers, performers, sporting events, or any other event.
• Audio/video capture: Cameras and/or microphones connected to the computer running Flash Media Live Encoder.
• Onsite encoding: Encoding provided using Flash Media Live Encoder on a computer with a reliable Internet connection.
• Internet: Liaison between computers running Flash Media Server, Flash Media Live Encoder, a web server hosting the playback SWF file, and the audience's computers.
• Flash Media Server or Flash Video Streaming Service servers: Flash Media Server (FMS) provides delivery of the video and audio streams using load balancing, failover, redundancy, and clustering via an origin/edge architecture. The Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) is provided through leading content delivery network (CDN) providers. FVSS provides an alternative to owning and operating your own FMS servers.
• Web server: Simple HTTP server hosting the Flash SWF file that is downloaded by the audience's computers to receive the webcast event. Only a single playback SWF file is required.
• Audience: Internet-connected event audience viewing the event using Flash Player to play the playback SWF file.

The following sections step you through configuring Flash Media Server using Flash Media Live Encoder, and creating a playback SWF file.

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