Video capture, video upload quagmire

Question

Hello, I see that this question was a asked several days ago, but hopefully, someone may be able to give some direction.
I am working on a project which will require the capturing and recording of videos through the clients' webcams.  Doing this through Flash Media Server is an option, but I would like to get the best possible video recording without being restricted by the limitations of bandwidth.  So I thought that it would be a simple matter of using Flex and AIR to capture the video and save it to the local hard drive, and then upload the video onto the server.  I would think that this would give the best possible video quality results.  And I thought that it would be logical that I would simply be able to direct the video stream to a local file rather than directing it onto the server, but this doesn't seem to be the case.  I have been exploring an alternative to AIR through the use of Java Media Framework, as it may provide the best cross platform solution.  I would prefer to stay within the AIR framework, but it does seem to be limited in this regard.  Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations on how to proceed in this development?

Answer 1

Hi, I worked on the problem for a few weeks, and I decided to give up on the idea, as I never came across anything that could do it.  I really needed to be able to record high quality video through an AIR application, and have it be easy for the user to use.  I get the sense that the flash environment slows down the processing too much for good video capturing.  I started to look at the possibility of using the Merapi bridge to access the now defunct Java Media Framework, but that would still require too much configuration on the part of the user for not that great of video quality.  I did however find that On2 has something that would work, and for a mere $12,000, I could have it.  But the best solution seems to be to not use AIR, and instead, use Nokia's Qt Widget along with VLC media player.  I just wasn't really that interested in pursuing it, especially since it would mean programming in C++.