Streaming a webcam to a remote webpage

Question

I am an amatuer web programmer. I manage our website for my
restaurant. www.KitesLive.com I have been trying to get a stable
streaming webcam on our site for some time without having to pay
some ridiculuos amount to a third party provider.
I hope this helps someone else, because it took me forever to
find all these steps
Step 1: Set up the webcam. I took a simple surveillance
camera and hooked it to an inexpensive video capture PCI card on my
computer at the restaurant that I use to provide free WiFi for my
customers. The video capture card came with some drivers which
allowed me to connect to the camera. (Note: I was a little
disappointed with picture quality, but I think that was a case of
you get what you pay for)
Step 2: Flash Media Encoder. You can download it free from
adobe at www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder.
I installed it on my computer (above) with the webcam hooked up to
it. Once installed run the program. The audio and video settings
are fairly straight forward. The output side was a little tricky
for a while. In the box labeled FMS URL enter
rtmp://localhost/live/instance1. Unselect save to file if checked.
In the box labeled Stream: enter livestream For now, you are done
with the Media Encoder.
Step 3: Flash Media Server. You can download the free
Development version from adobe at
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediastreaming.
I also installed it on the same computer as above. There are some
limitations to it, but it worked for me. Take a look at this
article for help installing it.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/beginner_installing_fm3.html
Once it is installed and running, I didn't mess with it. You can
log into the admin console to see the connections and performance
if you like. In the install process there is a point that deals
with the port for remote access. Keep track of this number. The
default is 1935.
Step 4: Go back to the Media Encoder. Click on the 'Connect'
button to make the connection from the encoder to the Media Server.
If everthing is working correctly the button will switch to a
'disconnect' button. Finally, click the 'Start' button to start
encoding the video feed to the Media Server.
Step 5: Find you ip address. If you don't have a static IP
address you will need to contact your service provider to find out
how to get one. Without a static IP you won't be able to put the
address in the Flash Player, because at some point your ip will
change. You can find you IP address by going to
http://www.whatismyip.com.
Step 6: Open the Ports. First find the details how to open or
port forward for your router. I found a lot of help on this
website.
http://portforward.com/routers.htm
I had never done port forwarding before. Basically in a nutshell,
when you type in an address on a remote browser like
24.248.189.201:1935 the browser goes to your STATIC ip
24.248.189.201 then checks to see if port 1935 is open. If it is
open, it follows the rules set by your router to reroute the
browser connection to a local ip (example: 192.168.0.150) address
which connects to another application, in this case Flash Media
Server.
If you are using a firewall you will need to set it up to
allow remote access to the port. For windowsXP, in the control
panel you can open the windows firewall. There is a tab to add
expections. On that tab there is a button to add a port. Give it a
name for you to recoginize and type in the port number that you
wrote down while installing the Flash Media Server. It took me a
long time to find info about this little step. Every port you open
on your router has to have the same port opened on your firewall or
nothing will work.
Step 7: Build the Flash Player.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/webcasting_fme.html
is a great article on building the flash player. For my situation
the player is loaded on a public access webpage on a completely
different webserver. Here is a an example of the rtmp: string I
used to make the connection through the router and firewall to my
Flash Media Server on the computer at my restaurant. (of course, I
did change a couple of numbers for securtity sake)
rtmpt://24.248.189.201:1935/live/instance1/livestream. Now lets
break the string down. 1. rtmpt converts the protocol to http so
the router will accept it. 2. your static ip again, 24.248.189.201
3. your open port, 1935 4. the location of the stream, /live 5. the
folder of the instance, /instance1 6. the name of the streaming
file, /livestream
Step 8. Publish your player with Flash. Load the html file to
your webserver and preview it in a browser. It worked for me.
Note: I am still trying to find the actionscript to handle
trying to access this webpage when you are actually on the same
domain as Flash Media Server. Something about that causes Explorer
to freeze up. If I find it soon I will try to add it here.
Good Luck.

Answer 1

That doesn't appear to be a US model, and this is the forums for Toshiba USA. You may want to contact Toshiba in your region.
- Peter