[Ask YC - Help]How to build streaming video applications

3 points·shabda··6 comments

I have an idea for an application which needs streaming videos, and I am loss where to start readning about it.

What are the technologies which I should read up on to build this?

Adobe's Flash Media Server (expensive licenses, good support), Wowza's Media Server (less expensive licenses, mediocre support), and Red5 (open sourced Java, poor support) are pretty much your main options. FMS has a free version that supports up to 10 simultaneous connections.

IIRC Justin.tv built their own custom RTMP server for their site.

Get those videos converted in to .flv format, put up on a webserver somewhere and point a flash video player to it, check this http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player (when it's up)

like fooblahblah said, if you want want true proper streaming you'll need flash communication server or open sourced red5.

There are many more steps involved but that is the general idea.

Streaming video as in user streaming a video file from your server, or streaming live video like on Ustream?

Check out Red5. It's an open source Java Flash Media Server replacement.

Or Wowza; I've used it and it's great, though it's a pity it's closed source.

I dont understand the terminology, but here is what I want to do,

I have a content deal with a popular event, and I want to make this event available on my site with as little delay as possible. I think this puts me into "streaming live video like on Ustream?" category?

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