Programming Flash Communication Server

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 1: Introducing the Flash Communication Server

NetStream object, in_ns, is created by passing the NetConnection object, nc, from the

preceding example to the NetStream( ) constructor function:

in_ns = new NetStream(nc);

videoArea.attachVideo(in_ns);

in_ns.play("public/Ryerson_High_Speed");

In this case, the video appears in a video object that was placed on the Stage during

authoring and given the instance name

videoArea; the audio within the video stream

is heard automatically. Note that the .flv extension is not included in the stream URI

passed into the play( ) method.

Publishing a stream in a Flash movie is also easy. Here, we create a new NetStream

object,

out_ns, and attach the audio and video streams from the user’s microphone

and camera before publishing the stream using NetStream.publish( ):

out_ns = new NetStream(nc);

out_ns.attachAudio(Microphone.get( ));

out_ns.attachVideo(Camera.get( ));

out_ns.publish(userName); // Name the stream after the user's name.

The Camera class can get a video stream from a web camera or other video source,

and the Microphone class can get an audio stream from a microphone or other

source.

You can create multiple streams (NetStream objects) for a single NetConnection,as

shown in Figure 1-3. Each stream can publish or play a stream to or from the server,

but data within a stream travels in only one direction. If each user must publish a sin-

gle stream, it is easiest to name the stream after his unique username or unique ID

number.

On the server, the Stream class can be used to create playlists of streams and even to

play and publish streams across multiple servers. A playlist defines a sequence of

streams to be played one after the other. The server buffers them so they play seam-

lessly without interruption; when one stream ends, another begins. Chapter 5 covers

the NetStream and Stream classes in depth.

Camera, Microphone, and Video

The Camera and Microphone classes, covered in depth in Chapter 6, provide access

to video and audio sources (typically cameras and microphones) on the client

Figure 1-3. A client publishing a stream and receiving two streams over one NetConnection

Client NetConnection Application instance

out_ns.publish(”blesser”)

in1_ns.play(”peldi”)

in2_ns.play(”justin”)

blesser

peldi

justin