Video and Media

Re: Re: Webcams and realtime audio

TimWard — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:24:11 GMT

Unfortunately the Silverlight 3 Beta feature list contains no microphone/webcam support.

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx#whatsnew

Looks like going to have to continue to use Flash 10 :(

I understand that the webcam support has lots of issues to consider, but microphone support does not appear to be that big a deal...

Tim
Senior Developer
C3

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

jagsoft — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:07:52 GMT

It sure would be nice if someone from Microsoft would give some REAL input on this subject. Microsoft are you listening?

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

follesoe — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:53:32 GMT

I got basic webcam support up and running in Silverlight, using HTML briding, Actionscript and Flash - Code, samples and documentation over at http://jonas.follesoe.no/PermaLink,guid,7f8857dc-5f37-4a8a-bd35-fd4b624af45b.aspx .

The trick is: Host a simple Flash app, expose some actionscript to grab a frame, PNG encode it, Base64 encode it, pas it to JS, pas it to C#, Base64 decode it, load it into a memory stream, load it into a BitmapSource, display it. That simple ;)

Cheers,

Jonas Follesø

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

gjhdigital — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:45:33 GMT

double posted(sorry).
I'm streaming the SciFi show: Ghost Hunters Live Halloween special via Silverlight on my site. Video is probably only good for tonight 10/31/2007

http://www.gjhdigital.com/silverlight/ghosthunters.html

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

rmavro — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:33:33 GMT

A better example of what you can do with live and stored video is at http://www.vbrick.net/multiplayer (be sure to kill any popup blockers)

Regarding an eariler comment in this thread, I draw a distinction between "live" and "low delay", not between "live" and "realtime". To me, realtime=live and it could be low delay or not. The reason for the delay is twofold: First, the format itself (asf) bunches the audio packets so that you must receive an entire frame before you can decode it if you want to maintain sync. Second, there is player buffering and MS does not allow it to be 0. And I guess you could add a third if you are using WMS which also delays delivery. To produce low delay audio/video in Silverlight, you'd have to use a non-asf format.

For non-Silverlight (WMP), we've built a low delay player that is well under half second delay for video.

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

gjhdigital — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:25:19 GMT

VBrick has an encoder that pushes the stream. The camera (which has to be a composite or s-video source and rca audio) is inputted into back of the VBrick Encoder and thats pushed to a Windows Media Server which is then broadcast via a url. You can also hit the IP of the VBrick encoder directly but I believe there are a limited amount of sessions.

check out: http://www.vbrick.net and http://www.vbrick.com

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

mclanning — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:01:39 GMT

Hi, GJHDigital,

I tested your site, and it is really live streaming.

However, my own case is still not working. I use windows media encoder to encode
a live video and stream it (via http protocol). But the MediaElement of silverlight can not
play the stream. (even no error message appear).

So, I wonder how you produce the live stream. Could you describe it more detail ?
For example. how the webcam video is streaming via windows media server ?
and, how the MediaElement of silverlight receives the streaming (any particular parameter or adjustment) ?

Thanks for your help.

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

OArnold — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:53:28 GMT

That's the point. I belive you that it is live, but it's not realtime. 15 seconds are too long, if you want someone to interact by this streamed video and for example an audio conference (imagine a teacher presenting something and interacting by audio with his students).

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

gjhdigital — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:34:16 GMT

It is real time, its coming off a Windows Media Server via an mms: url
Go here and change the text to see for yourself, it takes about 15 seconds to update the text (which is currently part of the video not silverlight).
http://www.textthefish.com/ and then go here to see it in Silverlight: http://www.vbrick.net/silverlight/

You'll need a webhost that offers streaming capabilities which most shared hosting plans dont offer.

Periodically we have more live streams here too: http://www.vbrick.net/noaa/noaa.htm

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

OArnold — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:25:57 GMT

Doesn't look like realtime for me, too. I think this is an example of the confusion of realtime with live streaming. Of course I can encode video streams "live" with the Expression Encoder. But there is the delay mentioned in an earlier post. And 10 to 30 seconds delay certainly not meets the requirements for a conferencing application.

We had this misunderstanding, too. And it looks like Silverlight just doesn't have what if takes for realtime streaming. At least not at the moment.

What I cannot understand is why there is absolutely no statement from anyone from the Silverlight team regarding the support for realtime streaming and webcams/microphones for conferencing applications. Obviously there is a great demand for this functioanlity!

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

jagsoft — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:09:39 GMT

Doesn't look like video conferencing or realtime to me, but what do I know

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

gjhdigital — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:12:20 GMT

we're streaming live content here:

http://www.vbrick.net/silverlight/

Re: Webcams and realtime audio

h99 — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:56:18 GMT

Well MS has enough time to implement such functionality, and I hope they will do it. Cause capturing audio or video feature can be one more killing feature of silverlight :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Webcams and realtime audio

luis.santos — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:52:23 GMT

jagsoft: Maybe you could see this link: http://www.webservertalk.com/archive218-2004-8-371298.html

Windows media services are not appropriate for a two way protocol. Live streaming has delays at least of 10 seconds. If you don't care about the delays you could make one live conference application but, maybe, with a limited set of users (??) I've never made this approach with Windows Media Services.

Of course it's possible to capture media from a client and publishing it to a server so it can be accessible to other clients but for the other clients to receive this streaming from a server and at the same time publish his/her own media for others to see he/she will need another channel (publishing point) to do this. That's why I said it could be done (with delays) to a limited set of users, because it is needed a channel for each one of them.

P.S - On the other hand...I've never tried this approach so try it. First you can try to make a one way approach and then transforming it into a two way.

Re: Re: Re: Webcams and realtime audio

vralex8 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:32:26 GMT

Hello,

I have the same problem..
I want to capture video+audio in the client computer and transfer it to another client or server.

Does anyone knows a way to do it?

Thanks,

Alex Vr