At least Debian 5 (Lenny) required.

Checkout release:
cat /proc/version
uname -a
cat /etc/issue
cat /etc/debian_version

If system is not in English, enable that:
dpkg-reconfigure locales
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Update /etc/enviroment

You may need to reboot.

Update:
apt-get update

Install Subversion:
apt-get -y install subversion

Install tools to build your own Debian packages:
apt-get -y install dpkg-dev debhelper dh-make devscripts fakeroot

Install Java (accept sun license if applies):
apt-get -y install java-package
apt-get -y install sun-java6-jre
apt-get -y install sun-java6-jdk
java -version

Install Apache Ant:
wget http://www.apache.org/dist/ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.8.2-bin.tar.gz
tar zxvf apache-ant-1.8.2-bin.tar.gz
mv apache-ant-1.8.2 /usr/local/ant
export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant
/usr/local/ant/bin/ant -version

Download the latest development version of Red5:
svn co http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk red5-trunk

Run ant to build red5:
cd red5-trunk
/usr/local/ant/bin/ant

Deploy red5:
mkdir /usr/local/red5
cp -R dist/* /usr/local/red5/
cd /usr/local/red5
chmod 755 red5.sh

Deploy your custom apps in/usr/local/red5/webapps .
In example VideoWhisper Red5 RTMP application needed to run VideoWhisper solutions.

Start Red5 in background:
cd /usr/local/red5
./red5.sh >> red5.log &

Verify the correct ports are being bound to:
netstat -ant

You need to restart red5 each time you add webapps to /usr/local/red5/webapps or change configuration.

Close Red5:
cd /usr/local/red5
./red5-shutdown.sh

Or kill Red5 processes:
ps aux | grep red5
kill $process_id

Then start it again:
cd /usr/local/red5
./red5.sh >> red5.log &

You can publish a rtmp stream to a rtmp address and then playback with an external player like JWPlayer.
If you publish StreamName to rtmp address rtmp://your-rtmp-address-here then you will need to configure JW Player:
var flashvars = { file: StreamName.flv, streamer: rtmp://your-rtmp-address-here, autostart:”true”, type:”rtmp”}

Webcam video streams can be published from web with a video Live Streaming broadcasting script. With the VideoWhisper Live Streaming soulution, StreamName is channel name (in example Studio586). Important: As latest VideoWhisper solutions also support P2P streaming, these need to be configured with alwaysRTMP=1 parameter in their _login.php or equivalent script so streams are always published to RTMP server.

If you want to publish for other devices special encoders and codecs would be required. Using an external encoder you can encode with codecs and settings not available in browser flash player (due to flash limitations). Not all encoders and versions are compatible with all rtmp servers and versions. Some require special configuration and usage instructions.

Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder can be used for Adobe Media Interactive server and is also reported to work with Wowza.

Wowza & Wirecast documentation and support is available for Wowza Media Server hosting.

Note that when publishing H.264, video player should be configured to play StreamName.mp4 instead of StreamName.flv .

Measure connection capabilities

To configure flash applications streaming you will first need to determine the connections that most users will have. So test first with your connection and also request other users to test.

So let’s consider this situation determined by http://www.speedtest.net (measure speed to a server close to the location of your streaming server):
Download: 9.43Mbp/s
Upload: 0.49Mbps

This looks like ADSL (in this situation upload bandwidth is 20 times lower than total connection bandwidth).

0.49 Mbps = 502 Kbps (kilobits per second)
8 bits = 1 byte,  so that means you can upload with 62 kb/s  (kilobytes per second)

As you can see, usually, connection is the cause of quality and latency limitations. A server with 1000Mbps connection will theoretically be able to handle up to 2000 x 0.49Mbps streams, so the server is not the problem with your tests, unless you’re on a shared plan and other clients are maxing out the resources.

How to configure flash videochat applications?

Considering you also have to upload audio and other data on that connection, you could setup camBandwidth to 49152 bytes/s (allocate for the compressed video stream).
On chat systems buffering should be reduced to 0.1 so delays are minimized. On 1 way streaming systems, you can use higher buffering to increase fluency in case of connection turbulence.

Flash streaming applications vs Skype

Skype desktop application uses different technology than these web based applications limited by browser based flash technology limitations . Skype uses:
-  p2p connections between all users and also uses fast 3rd users as proxies (not using server – so if you are in the same local network with the other tester or with a 3rd skype client with better connection, it uses the local bandwidth)
-  better codecs to get better quality for same bandwidth (flash player currently encodes only h263 and external encoders must be used to encode h264)

yum install ncftp
perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Bundle::CPAN’

perl -MCPAN -e shell

install XML:Simple
install Data:AMF
install Compress:Zlib
install Crypt:Rijndael
install WWW:Mechanize
install Authen::NTLM
install Compress::Zlib
install HTML::Entities
install HTML::Parser
install Net::SSL

exit

wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get_flash_videos-1.23 -O /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos

/usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos

If this is successful you should see get_flash_videos instructions and no dependency errors.

wget http://get-flash-videos.googlecode.com/files/get_flash_videos-1.23 -O /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos

chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/get_flash_videos

Flash is limited to loading files in certain formats.

To include something else in your flash chats and presentations you need to convert these files to supported formats. Most can be converted to swf.

See these tools below:

authorPOINT Lite Free PowerPoint to Flash Converter for PPS, PPT to SWF

iSpring Free PowerPoint, YouTube to SWF

Google Docs Viewer for PowerPoint, PDF, Tiff

SWFtools : PDF2SWF, SWFcombine, WAV2SWF, AVI2SWF

PDFcreator : Convert any windows printable document (i.e. DOC)  to PDF

This post shows how to install Wowza on a server where there is another RTMP server, already installed, i.e. Red5. Run 2 rtmp servers at same time and allow applications to connect on both simultaneously.

First install Wowza Media Server. Update version if necessary.

cd /root/tmp
wget http://www.wowzamedia.com/downloads/WowzaMediaServer-2-0-0/WowzaMediaServer-2.0.0.rpm.bin
chmod a+x WowzaMediaServer-2.0.0.rpm.bin
./WowzaMediaServer-2.0.0.rpm.bin

Then fill your Wowza Media Server license ( a free developer license for 10 connections can be used for testing):

cd /usr/local/WowzaMediaServer/bin
./startup.sh

Change rtmp port in /usr/local/WowzaMediaServer-2.0.0/conf/VHost.xml from 1935 to some other port not in use (i.e. 1936):

<Root>
<VHost>
<HostPortList>
<HostPort>
<ProcessorCount>4</ProcessorCount>
<IpAddress>*</IpAddress>
<!– Separate multiple ports with commas –>
<!– 80: HTTP, RTMPT –>
<!– 554: RTSP –>
<Port>1936</Port>

Run Wowza in background. You can also add this to /etc/rc.d/rc.local to have it running on each server restart:

cd /usr/local/WowzaMediaServer/bin
./startup.sh > start.log &

Now you’ll be able to access wowza rtmp applications with rtmp://your-server:1936/your-wowza-application while red5 applications will be accessible the old way with  rtmp://your-server/your-red5-application .

An example of 2 rtmp servers running on same linux server is the VideoWhisper Webcam Video Recorder.

Red5 Video Recorder
Wowza Video Recorder

For more details check the home page of VideoWhisper web based Video Recorder.

This post shows how to install latest Red5 from svn trunk on Linux Ubuntu.

For other linux flavors (i.e. Centos) see this comprehensive tutorial Install Red5 and JDK on Centos.

This installation was done from windows so we used  WinSCP and PuTTy (free software)  and was inspired from online tutorials.
This installation was done fluently: if you go to other folders and do other tasks during the installation make sure you return to the right folder before resuming.

If you’re doing this remotely comment any line referring to cdrom as source from /etc/apt/sources.list .

Some prerequisites:
add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install locate
updatedb

Installed required packages one by one:

apt-get install subversion
apt-get install java-package
apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
apt-get install ant

Used arrows to browse to the Ok and confirm on jdk installation dialogs.

Verified installed java version:
java -version

Downloaded latest Red5:
mkdir -p ~/svn/red5
cd ~/svn/red5
svn co http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk red5

Build Red5 with Ant:
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/
export ANT_HOME=/usr/share/ant/
cd ~/svn/red5/red5
/usr/share/ant/bin/ant

Installed Red5:
mkdir /usr/share/red5
cp -R dist/* /usr/share/red5/
cd /usr/share/red5
chmod 755 red5.sh
chmod 755 red5-shutdown.sh

Started Red5:
./red5.sh > start.log &

Verified opened ports:
netstat -ant

To install a new rtmp application you need to:

1. Copy application to /usr/share/red5/webapps (i.e. /usr/share/red5/webapps/videowhisper as explained on VideoWhisper RTMP Applications)
2. Shutdown red5
   cd /usr/share/red5
   ./red5-shutdown.sh
3. Restart red5
   ./red5.sh > restart.log &

An alternative to doing the red5 installation yourself would be to order red5 installation .

If you don’t have the time and experience to run your own server or vps, you should use managed red5 hosting .

VideoWhisper.com upgraded the Live Streaming application bringing several improvements and optimizations requested by users.

Some of the improvements:

• advanced webcam settings (change realtime resolution, framerate, audio rate)
• fullscreen button for video watching interface
• fullscreen on click for embedded plain video stream interface
• generate updated jpg snapshots for each live stream
• timers (displayed on each interface depending on settings) can be used to control access, integrate in pay per view systems
• multiple new options and parameters passed from script side

Also some RTMP application improvements should be mentioned like external player support and live video archiving as FLV for the Red5 application.

Upgrades are available for download on VideoWhisper.com and do not involve any costs for free or paid licenses.

First edition available with the upgrade is the PHP edition. The rest should follow shortly.

With the latest VideoWhisper rtmp applications versions, webmasters can enable external player support (both for FMIS and Red5).  This can be enabled from  RTMP Application Settings.

You need to have allowPlayers=true for FMIS or acceptPlayers=true for Red5 . These settings are turned on by default.

This will allow playing a stream published by a VideoWhisper flash application like Live Streaming with an external player like JW Player.

Demo:

Publish a stream from Live Streaming Demo (i.e. Studio1) and then view it on JW Player. Update channel name in link if you’re using a different one.

Important: As latest VideoWhisper solutions also support P2P streaming, these need to be configured with alwaysRTMP=1 parameter in their _login.php or equivalent script so streams are always published to RTMP. Because of this, demo above is disabled (to prevent heavy rtmp usage on public install), but you can use sample code in your own installs.

Here is the code to embed JW Player:

<?
include(“settings.php”);
$stream=$_GET['n'];
?>
<object id=”player” classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ name=”player” width=”328″ height=”260″>
<param name=”movie” value=”player.swf” />
<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” />
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” />
<param name=”flashvars” value=”file=<?=urlencode($stream)?>.flv&streamer=<?=urlencode($rtmp_server)?>&autostart=true” />
<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”player.swf” width=”328″ height=”260″>
<param name=”movie” value=”player.swf” />
<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” />
<param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” />
<param name=”flashvars” value=”file=<?=urlencode($stream)?>.flv&streamer=<?=urlencode($rtmp_server)?>&autostart=true” />
<p><a href=”http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer”>Get Flash</a> to see this player.</p>
</object>
</object>

Also this code could be used for playing a Studio1 stream broadcaster with VideoWhisper Live Streaming. Make sure you have swobject.js and player-viral.swf in that folder.

<script type='text/javascript' src='swfobject.js'></script> <div id='mediaspace'>This text will be replaced</div> <script type='text/javascript'> var so = new SWFObject('player-viral.swf','mpl','320','320','9'); so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true'); so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always'); so.addParam('wmode','opaque'); so.addVariable('file','Studio1.flv'); so.addVariable('volume','5'); so.addVariable('streamer','rtmp://your-rtmp-server/videowhisper'); so.addVariable('autostart','true'); so.addVariable('quality','false'); so.write('mediaspace'); </script>

JW Player Demo

Interesting Plugins:

• Adtonomy Text Ads Plugin lets you run your own text ads within the JW FLV Player
• Google Analytics plugin for the JW Player is designed to help you understand how well your video content is performing online
• LongTail’s AdSolution allows you to run pre-roll, overlay mid-roll, and post-roll advertisements in your media player
• LongTail Video’s Adtonomy Plugin lets you run your own FLV advertisements within the JW FLV Player
• Viral, a video distribution plugin, supports three main functions: embed, link, and recommendations
• The D-Related plugin allows you to load in list of the related clips in XML format