Updates on H.264 support in Red5

Here are some updates on h.264 support in Red5. The link below will take you to a demo site to showcase h.264 streaming in Red5. This demo has a simple AS3 Flash client capable of playing H.264 content with Red5. The FLV content shows the huge difference in quality.

http://s1blue2.waltertak.com:15080/demos/

Currently Red5 does not support h.264 live streaming. It currently concerns only on VOD. h.264 feature is now scheduled for the 0.9.0 release.

h.264 is Now Working With Red5

In my last post, I wrote about Red5 0.8.0 release and possible h.264 support in Red5 version 0.9. Now there is a good news from Red5 team related to h.264.
Paul Gregoire from Red5 has announced that h.264 is now working with Red5. They are able to stream h.264 videos from Red5.

This is another milestone achieved by Red5 that will help Red5 to gain more popularity. On Red5 forum, there is a thread to discuss this news. You can also read or join this discussion from here.

More details on this new feature is available on http://gregoire.org/2008/10/06/red5-h264/

Red5 0.8.0 RC1 Released

Red5, the open source flash server announced the release of Red5 0.8.0 RC1. There are bulk of changes made in this version since Red5 0.7.0, which includes new features, bug fixes and other changes.

The installers are available for Windows and Debian. Installer for Mac OSX will be available soon.

The details of major changes and bug fixes as provided by Red5 team are given below-

New Features

• Added socket policy file server to support new security model, starting in flash player 9.0.124


• Added virtual hosting capabilities (Tomcat only)


• Added W3C log appender for logback modeled after FMS log events and categories


• Added the ability to unload a context using the ContextLoader


• Added RTMPS support (Jira SN-69)


• Set default J2EE servlet container / HTTP server to Tomcat


• Added Flex based application installer for red5 web applications


• Added War auto-deployer service


• Added additional MP3 ID3 data to the onMetaData event


• Added onImageData and MP3 cover art support

Bugfixes

• RTMPProtocolDecoder fixed to support RSO sendMessage (Jira CODECS-9)


• Fixed Tomcat logging problem


• Fixed memory leak in ServiceUtils


• Fixed connection timeout (Jira SN-95 / APPSERVER-274)


• Resolved exception with WarLoaderServlet (Jira APPSERVER-224)


• Resolved log directory issue (Jira APPSERVER-246)


• Resolved ServerStream issue with w3c logging (Jira APPSERVER-263)


• Added patch to support ability to implement IBroadcastStream for custom streaming protocols (Jira SN-87)


• Resolved OSX connection problem with players > version 9,0,115


• Added patch for InvocationTargetException on missing files (Jira SN-99 and SN-97)


• Fixed a small issue with stream ids > 100


• Added patch for flv metadata handling


• Added patch for RTMPT client


• Added patch for start and stop scripts


• Fixed logging in web applications


• Root cause was not being sent on error in Flex message service (Jira APPSERVER-288)


• Allow serializer to make use of other annotations like JPA (Jira APPSERVER-277)


• Collections are not serialized appropriately (Jira APPSERVER-293)


• Unable to read external AMF3 arrays in IExternalizable classes (Jira APPSERVER-283)


• Deadlock issues with fix in Output.java (Jira APPSERVER-289)


• Bug with scope stopping and multithreading (Jira APPSERVER-290)


• SharedObjects modified flag doesn’t get set to false (Jira APPSERVER-291)

Other

• Split demos and flash sources into their own top level directories


• Added application snapshot repository

More information about this release is available at http://osflash.org/red5/080rc1

Red5 team also updated the project roadmap. Red5 0.9 will have many exciting features such as -

• Terracotta Support


• H.264 Support


• RTSP handling for live streaming into Red5


• Serverside AS1/AS3 support

Red5 Defense and Statistic Systems Beta 1

With Red5 server, you are always concern about unauthorized connections. To make your Red5 server secure against unauthorized connections, Red5 Defense and Statistic Systems Beta 1 scripts are released. The purposes of developing these scripts are-

• Limiting of non allowed access to the Red5 server.


• Collecting of stats by broadcaster’s connections to the Red5 server.


• Collecting of stats by member’s connections to the Red5 serve.


• Collecting information about the traffic which goes through RED5 server.

The Red5 Defense and Statistic Systems scripts are free and open source. You can now start hosting Red5 server and based on the data which these scripts generate, you can know the traffic which goes through your servers and hence can earn payments for that traffic.

More information about these scripts as well as the download information is given at- http://www.red5server.org/red5defensestatistic