Red5-An open source flash server

Finally Red5 1.0 RC1 is Out - Give it a try

2011-02-13T06:43:00.000-08:00

Lately I was not following Red5 but recently I got to know about the release of Red5 1.0 RC1. It's a much awaited release of Red5. Now you have a pretty stable media server in place so you can build interesting applications using it. You can download the latest 1.0 RC1 version of Red5 from the following download links-

Red5 1.0 RC1 (Release Date : 2 February 2011)

Windows | ZIP | Tarball | OSX | WAR

Red5 Releases V0.9.0 RC2

2009-11-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

Red5 recently released a newer version V0.9.0 RC2. It's the update after Red5 V0.9.0 RC1 which was released on 03 August 2009. The changelog for Red5 0.9.0 RC2 is not yet available. Following is the changelog of Red5 0.9.0

New Features:

Added AVC/h.264 live streaming based on Tiago Jacobs patches.
Added enums for Audio and Video codec types.
Added capability to add IoFilters? to RTMPConnection per application.
Added AAC live streaming code based on Wittawas Nakkasem's IceSurf? code.

Bugfixes:

Fixed bug with recording, where meta files were not removed when using the same name.
Changed VideoCodecFactory? into a "true" factory class.
Applied patch for h.264 live stream packet handling from Dave Feltenberger.
Applied FP 10.0.32.18 patch from Ari-Pekka Viitanen

I will post here the complete changelog once I get official information about the same.

Updates on H.264 support in Red5

2009-04-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

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

Red5 API Documentation in Docbook PDF Format

2008-08-05T08:13:00.001-07:00

For all Red5 developers, here is an online Red5 Javadoc API reference in docbook pdf format. http://red5.electroteque.org/dev/doc/pdf/red5-api-reference.pdf. The file is bit heavy but very useful. It's still under modification. It’s a good link to bookmark.

Recent Update:-

According to a post to Red5 community by Dominick, Red5 Documentation has moved to a new location. http://red5.newviewnetworks.com/red5docs/. The docs are currently generated once per day.

New Red5 FAQ location is -

http://jira.red5.org/confluence/display/docs/Red5+FAQ+r0.7.1

F-ab 2.5.0 with embedded Red5 Server for FLVPhone Released

2008-07-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

F-ab has released F-ab 2.5.0. F-ab is a browser for flash movies. F-ab has embedded Red5 server to use for an integrated application called FLVPhone in it. FLVPhone is a video conference telephone application in which an email address is required to specify a person to be called in conference.

Red5 0.6.3 is embeded within F-ab application to communicate with remote FLVPhones. Below are the minimum requirements to run F-ab application-

Internet Connection (Cable or DSL)

Windows XP or Vista, Mac OS 10.4 or 10.5

minimum 512 MB of RAM

Screen Resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher

Java Runtime Environment 5 or 6

To read more about F-ab, visit their website.

IP Camera Streaming and Red5 Flash Server

2008-07-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Very recently, we received a requirement in which we have to forward the IP Camera stream to a client. It's basically a monitoring application. Let say we have 5 IP camera's and a centralized client machine where we have to throw the streams from all 5 IP cameras. I was wondering how we can use Red5 flash server in this scenario.

I have really no idea of IP Camera. I went through Wikipedia to read more about IP Camera.

I also checked the Red5 mailing list and found that something similar to this has already been discussed but nothing is implemented yet. IP Camera produces JPEG's. I am not sure that re-encoding it to flash video will make sense. ffmpeg and other options are there as per discussion. Guys need your suggestion on this implementation. Meanwhile I will explore the possibilities of achieving this solution and will update you.

Red5 Flash Media Server vs. Adobe Flash Media Server

2008-07-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

From many days, i was tracking the search queries which lead people to this blog and I found that many people are looking for the answer of "whether to choose Red5 or FMS". Few queries I tracked were-

red5 vs. FMS

flash Media server Red5 compare

red5 better than Flash Media Server

features comparison of flash media server and red5

compare red5 and fms

red5 streaming vs fms

red5 vs flash media server

comparision of red5 and fms

choose between Red5 and Flash Media Server

compare flash media servers red5

open Source FMS

fms vs red5

red5 vs adobe

red5 vs adobe flash server

red5 versus flash media server

I have written couple of posts on this topic and I will provide the links to those posts here, so that if someone falls to this page can have access to all those posts.

Red5 + RTMPS - Who Need FMS?
10 Quick Reasons Of Why To Choose Red5 Media Server Over Flash Media Server
Red5 and Server-Side ActionScript - A Gift to Flash Developers

As Red5 server is moving towards version 1.0, the curiosity among current FMS developers is increasing towards Red5, because it's a free and open source solution.

Red5 0.7.1 - What will be there for us?

2008-07-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

Red5 flash media server is in version 0.7 and the next release is v0.7.1. Below is a look of new Red5 features, known bugs and enhancements, we may see in the next release.

New Features:-

W3C Logging Format

Unlike FMS, Red5 server was not able to logging in an easily parsable W3C format in previous versions. In this new version, Red5 will support W3C logging format.

Detailed Information (Stats API)

FMS provides the detailed information about the stream such as bytes sent, client ip etc. and also provides splitting of logging file depending on it's an event or access log. It seperate outs the debugging and errors of application from Access log. Red5 will now also provide the detailed information as mentioned above in the next version.

Run all protocols on all ports

FMS provides support for running protocols on different ports. According to Adobe -

"Flash Player communicates with the Flash Communication Server using RTMP protocol over port 1935. If that fails, it will try again over ports 443 and 80 in an attempt to workaround firewall settings within a company, which prevents TCP/IP connections over non-standard ports. The above approach allows approximately 96% of all users to access publicly accessible Flash Communication servers"

Read in detail from HTTP Tunneling protocols

In the current version of Red5, this thing does not happen. Red5 only listen to a port configured in red5.properties file. There was no way to listen on multiple ports for all protocols like FMS, but in the next release 0.7.1, Red5 will support this feature.

Enhancements:-

Extend Scope Easily

Previously stats counters in scope were private, so they were not available when you extend the scope. Now all the current stats counters have been made protected to let them easily accessible by subclasses.

Bug Fixes:-

RemoteObject now works with Flex3 beta 3. More details are here.
Marshalling errror when pass Int from Flash Client to Red5 fixed. More details are here.

This was just a quick look of Red5 v0.7.1 future release. More detail information over new features, enhancements and bug fixes will be available in the release notes when 0.7.1 will be released.

Red5 Plugin Beta 1 Available To Red5 Community

2008-07-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

infrared5 today released the "Red5 Plugin" Beta 1. Red5Plugin will be great for those, want to build and deploy Red5 applications more rapidly.

Red5 Plugin offers following features-

1: Generate Client/Server applications

2: Test and Debug Red5 Applications

3: Generate framework code

4: Add Flex Unit Support

5: Add support for popular open source libraries

6: Generate example code (not in beta 1)

7: Generate ASDocs (not in beta 1)

With the help of new features such as server configurations, Code generation and the important one debugging support, the development of the Red5 applications will be very fast.

Red5 Plugin is still in beta, so some of the features listed here may not be work as expected, but Red5 Application generation and running and debugging on Red5 is working perfectly.

About Red5 Plugin:

Red5 Plugin is a powerful Eclipse based plugin which includes Red5 project code generation wizard with added support for specific third party frameworks, interactive step-through debugging and more features.

More information about Red5 Plugin is available here and more detailed information of Red5 Plugin beta release is available here.

Red5 And RTMP Support In VLC Media Player

2008-06-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

VLC media player is a cross platform media player and streaming server from VideoLan. VLC supports various streaming protocols but RTMP protocol was not supported by VLC Media Player.

Recently i saw a post on VideoLan forum talking about possibilities of adding support for RTMP streaming and Red5 in VLC media player. The post was very interesting and I thought of sharing this information with everyone here. VLC Media Player is working on implementing RTMP support. They have already implemented RTMP as input source and this will enable one to-

Stream RTMP from Flash Player 9.0.124 to VLC

Receive RTMP stream and Transcode to multiple RTSP stream outs.

There was also a discussion over the possibility of supporting Red5 in VLC.

will VLC get the possibility to connect against running rtmp servers like Red5? Scenario: Take a stream, transcode to H.263 / VP6, act as rtmp client and connect/broadcast to a server via rtmp://myflashserver:1234/streamname ?

Now when RTMP input is implemented by VLC Media Player, they started working on RTMP output and Real time streaming h.264 RTSP to RTMP in VLC.

Red5 and Server-Side ActionScript - A Gift to Flash Developers

2008-05-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

Ryan: Hi Bob, Did you hear about Red5 Flash Server?

Bob: Yeah i know Red5, it's an alternate to Flash Media Server with cool features and it's free.

Ryan: Did you try it?

Bob: It's very hard for me, i am a pure flash developer. I do server side coding in ActionScript using Server-Side ActionScript. For coding server side applications in Red5, i need to learn Java.

Ryan: What if you are able to do server-side ActionScript coding in Red5?

Bob: Wow, I would love to go for Red5 over FMS. Red5 with server-side ActionScript is a gift for me. Along with new application development, i can also easily convert my existing FMS based applications into Red5

This was the normal conversation between two flash developers who love to do coding in ActionScript and because of the fact that Red5 is written in Java, they are not so comfortable to move from FMS to Red5.

Here is the question- Why I posted this conversation? Well, i have a reason to share it. Please read below-

Red5 server will soon introduce a new feature in the future releases and it's "server-side Actionscript support".

With server-side ActionScript API for Red5, it will be possible to support FMS applications written independently of Red5, possibly with little or no refactoring.

Does it sound great? If yes, then it's time now to read all technical stuffs behind this new feature rather than reading this post. Here are the details-

Support for server side actionscript
FMS Application Portability

Red5 + RTMPS - Who Need FMS?

2008-05-26T18:19:00.000-07:00

Few days back, i wrote a post about Red5 vs FMS. In that post, i did a quick comparison between Red5 and FMS, Now one more point needs to be added in that list and its "Built-in Support of RTMPS in Red5".

Yes Red5 has achieved another great feature. Red5 now has built-in support for RTMPS. Before this many users achieved RTMPS with the help of Stunnel, but now they don't need to go for it. They have this option in Red5 itself.

Paul Gregoire from Red5 team today announced the support of RTMPS in Red5 along with a nice tutorial to follow. Later, the Red5 community also started talking about this new feature. You can find latest conversation over RTMPS here. This feature is available via SVN starting with revision 2819 and will be available in future release of Red5 (Currently Red5 is in version 0.7.0)

Save Video Images To Server Using Red5 and Flex

2008-05-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a small tutorial telling how to save video preview images from Flex client to Red5 server.

The work is to take a snapshot of a video stream from the client and some how get it to be a saved image on the server. There are ways to acheive this using ffmpeg or using a scripting language in combination with Red5. But this is the simplest one as it does not require any additional library. Flex does everything.

You can get a PNG or JPEG file saved to the Red5 server the following way-

Client Side (Development took place on Free flex sdk 3.0.0.477)

So lets assume that you already have a netconnection to your serverside application. You also have a camera opened and attached to a UI component in the browser. I have it so when a button called "Take sceen shot" is clicked the function "handleScreenShot" is called.

NOTE: SharedVideo is a public var of type Video. When I attached the video from the camera to the UI, I copied it into Shared video.

private function handleScreenShot():void {

// Clear out any previous snapshots

pnlSnapshot.removeAllChildren();

var snapshotHolder:UIComponent = new UIComponent();

var snapshot:BitmapData = new BitmapData(320, 240, true);

var snapshotbitmap:Bitmap = new Bitmap(snapshot);

snapshotHolder.addChild(snapshotbitmap);

pnlSnapshot.addChild(snapshotHolder);

snapshot.draw(SharedVideo);

pnlSnapshot.visible = true;

// Here is how you encode the bitmapimage to a png or jpeg ByteArray and send it to the server

//var jpgEncoder:JPEGEncoder = new JPEGEncoder(75);

//var jpgBytes:ByteArray = jpgEncoder.encode(snapshot);

var pngEncoder:PNGEncoder = new PNGEncoder();

var pngBytes:ByteArray = pngEncoder.encode(snapshot);

nc.call("Save_ScreenShot", null, pngBytes);

}

Server Side

Ok now the server side code for the function "Save_ScreenShot". I have this right inside the main java file of my Red5 applicationNOTE: You must import the following classes.

import org.red5.io.amf3.ByteArray
import javax.imageio.ImageIO
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage

public String Save_ScreenShot(ByteArray _RAWBitmapImage) {
// Use functionality in org.red5.io.amf3.ByteArray to get parameters of the ByteArray
int BCurrentlyAvailable = _RAWBitmapImage.bytesAvailable();
int BWholeSize = _RAWBitmapImage.length(); // Put the Red5 ByteArray into a standard Java array of bytes
byte c[] = new byte[BWholeSize];
_RAWBitmapImage.readBytes(c);

// Transform the byte array into a java buffered image
ByteArrayInputStream db = new ByteArrayInputStream(c);

if(BCurrentlyAvailable > 0) {
System.out.println("The byte Array currently has " + BCurrentlyAvailable + " bytes. The Buffer has " + db.available());
try{
BufferedImage JavaImage = ImageIO.read(db);
// Now lets try and write the buffered image out to a file
if(JavaImage != null) { // If you sent a jpeg to the server, just change PNG to JPEG and Red5ScreenShot.png to .jpeg
ImageIO.write(JavaImage, "PNG", new File("Red5ScreenShot.png"));
}

} catch(IOException e) {log.info("Save_ScreenShot: Writing of screenshot failed " + e); System.out.println("IO Error " + e);}
}

return "End of save screen shot";

This is one way, You can also make it working for the other way i.e. getting images from server to client.

Thanks to Charles Palen for posting the snippet of this code in Red5 community.

Red5 And RTMFP( Real Time Media Flow Protocol): Will It Be?

2008-05-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

Just two days back, Adobe made a prerelease of Adobe Flash Player 10. There are many new significent features, improvements. Some of the features like RTMFP(Real Time Media Flow Protocol) just discussed but not shared the deatil yet by Adobe.

This prerelease from Adobe gave great news to Open Source Flash community( http://osflash.org), more Specifically red5 community and they already started talking about it here and here.

What is p2p RTMFP?

You can get good idea about it here at -

http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2008/5/15/player-10-beta-speex-p2p-rtmfp

and

http://justin.everett-church.com/index.php/2008/05/16/rtmfp-in-flash-player-10-beta/

or read RTMFP FAQs

But from the release notes, it seems that many new features will be available only to FMS users with future release of FMS, so it will be another challenge for the red5 team.

Building Red5 Applications- Video

2008-05-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

I found a video of Chris Allen that walks you through getting started actually using Red5 server, so i thought of sharing it here.

This video will help you to better understand what is Red5 and how can you start building applications using Red5.

Reference:-
Building Red5 Applications

Embedded Tomcat In RED5

2008-05-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

The development of Red5 server is on the fast track. Red5 developers are adding more and more functionality in order to make Red5 server, a tough competitor of FMS.

Paul Gregoire from Red5 has worked on Embedded Tomcat in Red5. Now we have a choice between Jetty and Tomcat as a web container, Previously Jetty was the only web container with Red5.

Though emebeded Tomcat won't impact your application in terms of functionality. But it gives you the option to choose between web containers and an advantage that it will now be easier to run the Edge/ Origin setup from the embedded Tomcat as opposed to the Tomcat standalone container.

How to change the settings to make it working with Tomcat?

Go to red5.xml in conf directory and comment the jetty server and uncomment the Tomcat server like below-

<bean id="tomcat.server" class="org.red5.server.tomcat.TomcatLoader" init-method="init" destroy-method="shutdown" autowire="byType" depends-on="context.loader">

  <!- - Note: the webapp root folder must be specified before the "contexts" property - ->
  <property name="webappFolder" value="${red5.root}/webapps" />

     <property name="embedded">

     <bean class="org.apache.catalina.startup.Embedded" />
     </property>

     <property name="engine">
   <bean class="org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine">

          <property name="name" value="red5Engine" />
          <property name="defaultHost" value="localhost" />
   </bean>
     </property>


     <property name="realm">
     <bean class="org.apache.catalina.realm.MemoryRealm" />
  </property>

     <property name="connector">

   <bean class="org.apache.catalina.connector.Connector">
          <property name="port"><value>${http.port}</value></property>
          <property name="redirectPort"><value>${https.port}</value></property>

          <property name="enableLookups"><value>false</value></property>
   </bean>
     </property>

        <property name="baseHost">
        <bean class="org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost">

            <property name="name" value="localhost" />
            <property name="unpackWARs" value="true" />
            <property name="autoDeploy" value="true" />

            <property name="xmlValidation" value="false" />
            <property name="xmlNamespaceAware" value="false" />
        </bean>
     </property>

  <property name="valves">
        <list>
       <bean id="valve.access" class="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve">
                 <property name="directory" value="log" />

                 <property name="prefix" value="localhost_access." />
                 <property name="suffix" value=".log" />
                 <property name="pattern" value="common" />

                 <property name="resolveHosts" value="false" />
                 <property name="rotatable" value="true" />
         </bean>
        </list>

        </property>

</bean>

The discussion over embeded Tomcat in Red5 is going on Red5 mailing list.

Open Source SIP Phone With Red5 And Flex3

2008-05-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

Few days back, i wrote an interesting post talking about implementation of open source SIP phone with Red5 and Flex3.

This was possible with latest release of Red5 plugin for Openfire that features a completely open-source implementation of a web-based SIP softphone written in Flex3.

The below diagram shows how the implementation works-

More detail information over its working and the technologies behind its implementation are available here at- Flash-based Audio in Openfire part II

Red5 Showcase-- Applications Using Red5 Continues...

2008-05-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

In my previous post of Red5 showcase, I shared the information of many applications that are using Red5 media server as a part of their development. This post will showcase few more such applications.

Pixelquote(http://pixelquote.com/) is an application based on Red5. It's a huge Pixelwall where visitors can simply add Pixels with their Messages.

http://www.ligachannel.com/ is a website of Italian singer. The website uses Red5 VOD Protected Streaming and audio/video recording widgets.

Dimdim(http://www.dimdim.com/) is an open source web conferencing system that uses Red5. Dimdim is available for free so everyone- not just big companies with big budgets - can use it. And Dimdim is available as open source software so you can extend and improve it freely.

ePresence (http://epresence.tv/) is both a webcasting and web conferencing system that supports full duplex, multi-point audio and video conferencing + desktop sharing. This new functionality has been added by integrating an Open Source real-time communications platform Red 5 with ePresence Server.

Gchats Visichat(http://www.gchats.com/red5chat/visichat/) is a live video chat community that connects you with people from around the world. Connecting is easy with public and private chat rooms. With breakthrough video and voice technology which gives you a real and natural experience.

Zingaya(http://www.zingaya.jp/) is a VOIP server built on Red5 for Flashphone.

Sticko(http://www.sticko.com/) is a multimedia content manager. You can manage your live video webcasts, photos, and videos from one place. Its a video portal with widgets for popular social networking sites like facebook, mySpace, Blogger, LiveSpace, WordPress, vBulletin and more.

Sprasia(http://www.sprasia.com/) is a website where you can edit videos and can add effects on top of it and share it with whole world. You can directly import videos from YouTube and can apply cool effects on top of these videos. Red5 is being used as a part of their development.

VPlace(http://www.vplace.com.br/) is an E-Learning system with Flex and Red5 with features like file sharing, nice laser pointer, chat, etcetera and live Screen Sharing feature in process. The website is in Portuguese.

Delta Strike(http://gamedev.fh-hagenberg.at/projects/delta-strike/) is an online and free browser independent multiplayer real-time strategy game.

Hubba Bubba world( http://www.hubbabubba.com/hbw/mmo/index.do ) is a real time multi-player 3D game.

http://www.f-ab.net- Browser for Flash Movie with embedded Red5 for FLVPhone, a video conference telephone. Read more about this here.

Red5 is hot and many companies around the world are showing interest in building applications based on Red5. I will again showcase Red5 based applications as soon as I hear any new.

You can also contribute to Red5 showcase, if you are aware of any application that is based on Red5 and not listed here, just drop a comment with little details, I will include that in Red5 showcase.

Related Posts:-
New Version Of Dimdim's Open Source Community Edition Going To Release
Sprasia Now Open For All- Public Beta Released

Previous Post- Red5 ShowCase:-
Red5 Showcase-- Applications using Red5

10 Quick Reasons Of Why To Choose Red5 Media Server Over Flash Media Server

2008-04-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

Why to choose Red5, an open source flash media server over Adobe Flash Media server. Few weeks back, Red5 has released version 0.7.0 final which has many new features and bug fixes. The complete changelog is here.

Red5 vs. FMS

Here is a quick list of why to choose Red5 over FMS.

1. Red5 can stream as well as Flash Media Server.

2. No delay in Audio/Video broadcast with latest versions.

3. The server side is Java, much more popular than Adobe server side action scripting for flash media server.

4. Strong community support for Red5 as you can see in Red5 showcase, some of the big companies are also working on Red5 based application.

5. Red5 is not just a streaming server, its much more powerful, You can build many useful applications( whiteboard, Chat, Poll, Desktop Sharing, ...) over Red5, which does things more than just streaming.

6. Red5 uses MRTMP now to cluster the stream data with Terracotta, now you can do a load balancing with red5.

7. Red5 team is working to release the version of Red5 which will support H.264.

8. There are good Red5 support and hosting companies now available which can provide support and can host your Red5 based applications.

9. Red5 is an open source project (http://osflash.org/red5), so you can contribute to its development.

10. Red5 is fun, Red5 is free.

So if someone is in dilemma of selection between Red5 and FMS, share this information with him. You are welcome to put comments or suggest some more points to add to this list.

Reference:-
Red5 Official Webpage

Red5 And Load Balancing - Not The Load Balancer Way

2008-04-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

In one of my previous post, I discussed about the load balancing of stream data using Terracotta. There are many red5 users who do not want this solution because this soulution is too advance for them. They dont have such a huge load on their server that they need this soultion.
For those who just want to keep distributing the incoming requests to any of the available server they have, Lets call it static load balancing, because we know to which server we have to map the request.
We will not use any kind of load balancer like Pound or something else.

Below is simple way to acheive the load balancing of Red5 without using any load balancer.

Round-Robin:-
Suppose we have 4 Red5 servers and we want to distribute the incoming client request to one of these server in Round-robin fashion. So the possible table could be like below-


Request Red5-1 Red5-2 Red5-3 Red5-4
1       Yes    No     No     No
2       No     Yes    No     No
3       No     No     Yes    No
4       No     No     No     Yes
------------------------------------
5       Yes    No     No     No
-----------------------------------

As you can see the fifth request will again map to first red5 server and so on.

This was the simplest solution to distribute the load on Red5 server but it has some limitations.
This approach does not know which server is loaded much or exhausted. it simply passes the incoming request to any of the server based on round-robin.

The other efficient way to load balance red5 could be-

1. Add in your application a function that returns the amount of
rooms/instances/scopes and connected users.
2a. Develop a (php-)script that calls that function on your red5 server(s)
using AMFPHP via cron(job) once every xx minutes.
2b. Calculate the result (e.g. server A has 70 users and server B has 120
users) and store it in a small status-file (or db).
3a. Have your flash-client-application call the (php-)script
3b The script reads the status-file or db.
3c The script returns 'go connect to server A.
4 The flash client connects to server A , thus offloading server B.

The second solution is taken from the discussion in Red5 forum over load balancer.

See Also:-

Red5 clustering of stream data with Terracotta
MRTMP- Red5 load balancing

Red5 With MySQL

2008-03-31T03:13:00.000-07:00

Red5 flash server with MySQL database.

A very good tutorial that you can follow to start working with Red5 and MySQL 5.0 was posted few months back on actionscript.org by Milan Toth.

Read more about this good post here.

It's very detailed article with both client and server side sample code. Hope it will help for those who are looking for MySQL along with red5 flash server.

Create a Poll application in Red5 and Flash

2008-03-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

Red5 flash server is not just a server written to deliver the streaming of media.it's much more powerful server.
Here i am writing about how we can create a shared poll application using Red5 flash server which can be a part of Video conference application.

Note:-This article assumes that you have working knowledge of Red5 server and Flash.

Lets assume a typical video conference application , where a host and few other users are participating. Host has given access to create a poll.
As soon as host creates a poll, it will broadcast to every user including host in that conference and every user will participate in poll.

Flash Client Side Work:-

Create a user interface for creating the Poll.
A typical user interface for 3 kinds of Poll ( Single Answer, Multiple Answer and Free Text ) could be similar to the below diagrams.

Sample Poll creation window

When host click on next after selecting single answer or multiple answer. the screen may be like this.

For Free Text type, It may be like below screen.

All these screens will give the idea of a sample Poll user interface.

Now we move to second step, the XML representation of this UI. XML description of UI could be like this.

<poll polltype = "Single Answer">
<question text = "Will Red5 replace FMS in long run?">
<option id = "1" text = "Yes"/>
<option id = "2" text = "No"/>
<option id = "3" text = "Don't Know"/>
<option id = "4" text = "May be"/>
</question>

</poll>

The above XML will be created when host will select either Single Answer or Multiple Answer question. We will pass this XML String to Red5 server.

For Free text type question we can use the XML like below.

<poll polltype = "Single Answer">
<question text = "Explain Red5">
</question>

</poll>

Red5 server Side Work:-

Now we move to Red5 server side. Red5 side application will pick this XML and will
distribute this XML among all users including Host.

Flash Client Side Work:-

Once again this XML is on the flash client side with every user of the conference. Now client application will parse this application and build the user interface for participating in Poll based on type of question and number of options.
A sample poll participation screens for the above XML could be same as in below diagram.

Sample for Single answer type.

For Multiple answer type, we can replace the radio buttons with check boxes.

Sample for Free Text answer

For collecting the result data, we can use XML again. This way we can build a shared poll application with Red5 and Flash.

Note:- For distributing XML string to every user in conference, we can use the concept of shared object in Red5.

Interested to create a shared whiteboard application using Red5 and Flash? It is here

Red5 Showcase-- Applications using Red5

2008-03-24T19:56:00.000-07:00

Today many of well known applications are using Red5 flash server. Few of them are listed below.

http://www.snappmx.com/ - a Rapid Application Development System that supports the creation of Red5 applications.

http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings - Open source video Conference. Detail post about openmeetings is here.

http://www.dokeos.com Dokeos is a learning management system used in more than 600 companies and public administrations to manage e-learning and blended learning programmes.

http://spreed.comMeet and Present Any Time, Any Where - At a Push of a Button
spreed is the world´s first free web meeting service. spreed provides a free and worldwide Web 2.0 meeting service for consumers and professionals.

http://www.videokent.com/videochat.php Video Chat

http://blipback.com BlipBack is a video comment widget that you can embed on any number of social network sites or blogs you have. Blipback lets you or your friends record short video comments directly to your page.

http://artemis.effectiveui.com/ Bridge AIR applications to the Java runtime.

http://facebook.com/video Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.Video uploading/recording/messaging system that allows you to record a video on the upload page or send a private message to another user and attach a video.

http://www.streamingvideosoftware.info/ Streaming video chat software script is a RED5 based system that allows you to build a comprehensive pay per minute / pay per view video chat site.

http://nonoba.com/chris/fridge-magnets - Classical fridge magnet toy.

http://www.quarterlife.com - Video blogging application

http://www.avchat.net - Red5 Flash Audio/Video Chat Software

http://www.avchat.net/fms-bandwidth-checker.php - Red5 bandwidth checker with upload/download and latency tests

http://www.justepourrire-nantes.fr - Red5 Flash Video streaming

http://www.nielsenaa.com/TV/tv.php - Red5 Flash Php/MySql/Ajax driven scheduled & streamed multi channel TV

http://www.videoflashchat.com - VideoFlashChat - Red5 version for Web Based Video Chat

http://www.videogirls.biz - VideoGirls BiZ - Red5 version for Pay Per View Video Chat Software.

For detail list of applications using Red5, visit at red5 official showcase page here.

Red5 Project Roadmap

2008-03-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Red5 flash server is a free alternate of Flash Media server and its gaining popularity among open source users, conference calling companies and web conferencing solution providers.
Below is the project roadmap of the Red5 server development.

RED5 – Project Roadmap
Current Release: 0.7.0
Next Release: 0.7.1

0.1 Echo, Echo, Echo
Released Early October 2005

Proof of concept release showing RTMP and AMF support.

Standalone server
Spring and Mina integrated to form server base
AMF data encoding and decoding
RTMP packet encoding and decoding
Service invocation layer
Echo service exposed using RTMP

Read more at Red5 official roadmap page here

Red5 support and Hosting service

2008-03-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

Red5 is an open source flash server with a large community of users behind it.

red5server.com provides complete Red5 support and hosting service. They have dedicated and cluster solution for supporting many simultaneous connections.They have solutions for disk space and Bandwidth transfer also.
Their service works from anywhere in the world.To know more about red5 hosting and support, follow the link of red5server here.

Red5 and RTMPE -- Just a thought

2008-03-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

Adobe released the Flash media server 3 and it features RTMPE(Real time messaging protocol with encryption), an enhanced version of RTMP for higher performance and 128 bit encryption to increase the security of streamed media.
It's going to be very important feature for every FMS user who is concern about the security of his content.
Good post about DRM feature of flash media server from flashcomguru is here.
Just a thought, Will Red5 flash server( The open source alternate to FMS) support this new protocol.

Red5 Tutorials

2008-03-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Below is the link from where you can download many good Red5 tutorials in pdf format.

Download Red5 Tutorials

Enjoy!!

Red5 clustering of stream data with Terracotta

2008-03-17T03:40:00.000-07:00

Red5 is an open source flash server and alternate of flash media server from Adobe.Red5 load balancing was required to cluster the stream data.For this Red5 team has worked with Terracotta and now they have comeup with load balancing of Red5 in the red5 v 0.7.0 final release using MRTMP(Multiplex RTMP).
More information on reference links.

1.Terracotta Red5
2.Red5 and Terracotta POC
3.Clustering Red5
4.Edge origin solution on Terracotta

Red5 now in V0.7.0 Final

2008-03-17T03:20:00.001-07:00

Red5 has released the version 0.7.0 final. Below are the details of the changes.Red5 v0.7.0 final 02.23.2008
The Red5 Team is proud to announce the release of Red5 0.7.0

Major changes since 0.6.3:

Initial Edge/Origin clustering support for multiple Edges with a single Origin New Flex admin tool
Added a multi-threaded ApplicationAdapter that allows multiple clients to connect simultaneously to the same application
Added stream listeners that can get notified about received packets
Fixed a critical memory leak bug in networking due to MINA ExecutorFilter
Added new Flash Player 9 statuses NetStream.Play.FileStructureInvalid and NetStream.Play.NoSupportedTrackFound