Embedding live streams with Flowplayer
Previously, we discussed embedding flash videos into a webpage for on-demand content here – http://blog.mydeo.com/2009/04/24/flowplayer-quick-start-guide/. While this article covers both RTMP streaming and HTTP delivery methods it does not include instruction for how to get live flash streams to work with flowplayer.
The basics for this remain the same:
However, flowplayer needs to be told that the video is a live stream and for viewing stream from the limelight FMS the stream needs to be subscribed to. The code below explains how to do this:
<html>
<head>
<script src="flowplayer-3.1.0.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<a
style="display: block;height:400px;width:600px;background-color: #ffffff;border: solid 1px #ccc;"
id="rtmp_player">
</a>
<!-- Note: the property of the above tag (rtmp_player) must match the first parameter of the script below -->
<script>
$f("rtmp_player", "flowplayer-3.1.0.swf", {
clip: {
url : 'URL', //this is the name of the stream ass set in the encoder
live : true, //tell flowplayer that the stream live
provider: 'rtmp'
},
plugins: {
rtmp: {
url: 'flowplayer.rtmp-3.1.0.swf',
netConnectionUrl: 'First part of the URL' , //this is the rest of the URL excluding the stream name that you set in the encoder
subscribe:true //subscribe to the stream
}
}
});
</script>
</div>
</body>
</html>
With all that in place you should have no problem viewing your live flash streams in Flowplayer.
As usual, if you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact us on m3@mydeo.com and we will do our best to help you.
Posted in Articles, Technical | Tagged live streaming, m3, rtmp, video streaming | Leave a Comment »
February 25, 2010 by Richard
The main benefit of using a CDN such as Limelight Networks (via mydeo.com) is that your content is accessible much faster than if it was self-hosted. This is because, in addition to having your content stored globally on a network of high-speed servers interconnected by high-bandwidth connections (a “private internet”), it is also cached.
Why is it cached?
When you upload your content to us, you’re actually uploading it to a local network of redundant servers called ‘origin servers’. Depending on where you are in the world, the origin servers will change. When someone on the public internet requests your content, that file is then ‘copied’ (although, not physically) to the nearest endpoint that Limelight Networks has in relation to the person making the request of your content. This second copy is known as a ‘cached copy’, and it is for all intents and purposes a snapshot of your file at a particular point in time.
By caching your file for subsequent requests, considerable performance gains can be harnessed.
The period of time for which your file resides in cache is known as ‘TTL’, or ‘Time To Live’ – and that will be the subject of our next article coming soon.
Is that why a file I deleted is still accessible on the CDN?
Generally speaking, if you’ve deleted a file from either mydeo.com or your mydeo FTP account, and it is still accessible using it’s URL, then yes – caching is in effect. But don’t worry, your content will disappear off the network soon. If it’s an emergency, however, and you need the content to be removed quicker than allowing it to expire ‘naturally’, you can contact us and we can request a purge of the cached content on the network. This process generally takes 2-4 hours from the time the request is made, but in some circumstances can take up to 24 hours to complete.
Posted in Articles, Technical | Tagged caching, cdn | Leave a Comment »
February 25, 2010 by Richard
At mydeo, our crossdomain.xml file is not stored at the root of our domain(s). If you’re trying to access http://ht.cdn.mydeo.net/crossdomain.xml or http://mydeo.vo.llnwd.net/crossdomain.xml and wondering why they aren’t working, that’s because they’re not there!
Mydeo does not use a wildcard crossdomain.xml file, meaning that if your domain is not already listed in our crossdomain.xml, you will need to request it is added first. Then, follow the steps below to get your Flash application working correctly.
If the files you want to access are hosted on any of the following domains, you will need to append “/o1/u/m3/crossdomain.xml” to the root paths:
It is common belief that crossdomain.xml needs to be at the root of a domain, but this requirement can be worked around by utilizing the following commands in your application:
- System.security.allowDomain()
- System.security.loadPolicyFile()
These two commands were designed to allow the crossdomain.xml file to be loaded from anywhere within the domain tree and should be used as follows (choose based on the URL of the content you are attempting to access):
- For content referenced via http://ht.cdn.mydeo.net:
- System.security.allowDomain(“ht.cdn.mydeo.net”);
- System.security.loadPolicyFile(“http://ht.cdn.mydeo.net/o1/u1/m3/crossdomain.xml”);
- For content referenced via http://mydeo.vo.llnwd.net:
- System.security.allowDomain(“mydeo.vo.llnwd.net”);
- System.security.loadPolicyFile(“http://mydeo.vo.llnwd.net/o1/u/m3/crossdomain.xml”)
These must commands must be executed prior to loading any objects inside your SWF or it will have non-deterministic results (almost certainly failure to load).
Additionally, in Flash 10, the default header has been changed to ‘Master-Only’, this is the only significant change that has been made.
To deal with this, Limelight Networks does a header injection for calls to the crossdomain.xml on the root domain file which adds the following:
- X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies: all
This header permits Flash to look in the location specified for the crossdomain.xml file in the o1/u/m3 subdirectory.
Posted in Announcements, Technical | Tagged crossdomain, crossdomain.xml | 2 Comments »
February 24, 2010 by Richard
As of today, mydeo.com customers can request additions to the crossdomain.xml file held at http://ht.cdn.mydeo.net. This will enable your own Flash or Flex applications to access other content held at http://ht.cdn.mydeo.net and http://mydeo.vo.llnwd.net.
In order that we can add your entries, you will need to be subscribed to one of our paid plans (sorry, we cannot add crossdomain.xml entries for trial customers) and will need to provide us with a brief description of what your application will do (for security purposes).
There is a US $15, EUR 15 or £10 GBP one-off setup fee for each domain that you wish to add to the crossdomain.xml file.
To get started, please email us at geeks@mydeo.com and provide the following information:
- Your registered account email address
- A brief summary of your application and where it will be hosted
- The list of domains/paths that you wish us to consider for insertion into our crossdomain.xml file
Be sure to tell us if your application is private or it will be accessible publically.
Mydeo reserves the right to refuse amendments to the crossdomain.xml file. The setup fee is a non-refundable fee charged for professional services.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged crossdomain.xml, Flash, scripting | 1 Comment »
February 10, 2010 by Richard
We are proud to announce the release of a new feature, available free of charge to all Mydeo customers:
Introducing Quick Share
Quick Share makes it easy to share your media with the world without having to cut and paste code or even have a web site.
Quick Share adds a link next to compatible media files in Media Manager that creates a unique, publically accessible player page (complete with social network sharing links) so that you can share that file with anyone you choose.
Easily share your media with social media links!
Benefits
- No need to host your own web site to share your media
- No coding necessary
- 1-click setup
- No need to license third-party players
Just click the button next to the file you want to share, and we generate a unique link that you can give out to anyone you want to see share your video or pictures with.
Supported media formats
At the moment, our player page supports media of the following types:
- Windows Media (.wmv, .avi)
- Flash (.flv)
- JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG
- QuickTime (.mov, .qt)
The player page does not support ‘non-media’ formats, such as .ZIP or .TXT, for instance.
How to create your player page
Follow these steps to create your unique player page:
- Log in to your Mydeo account (if you don’t have one, you can get a free 15-day trial account).
- Go to Media Manager. If you don’t have any media yet, upload one of the supported media types above.
- Click the “Preview” link next to the file you want to share in Media Manager.
- This will generate a unique player page for your media, and you can share it with the world using the link provided!
Customising the width and height of your player
Windows Media, Flash and QuickTime players can have their height and width adjusted manually. To do this, you must alter the URL that you give people.
For instance, let’s say your sharing page is http://m3.mydeo.com/play/?f=123456
To customise the height and width, you would append the URL parameters ‘h’ and ‘w’, and set them to the values you want, like this:
http://m3.mydeo.com/play?f=123456&w=500&h=350
In this example, the URL will set the player width to 500 pixels and the height to 350 pixels.
Let’s hear your feedback!
This new feature is in BETA – so we’d love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think – good and bad, so we can improve!
Posted in Announcements, Technical, Uncategorized | Tagged players, public, publish, sharing, social | Leave a Comment »
December 17, 2009 by Kent
Refer a friend and earn £50 in Amazon vouchers
Do you know of anyone who is looking to deliver media on the internet? Mydeo, www.mydeo.com, is now offering £50 in Amazon.co.uk vouchers for anyone that you refer to us who signs up to one of our monthly packages. You can view all of the packages that we have available here – https://m3.mydeo.com/business/plans.aspx.
All you have to do to earn your £50 voucher is send us the details of the person you think will benefit from using us, including an email address, name and telephone number if you have it. You can send all of the information to m3@mydeo.com.
There is no limit to the number of referrals you can send us, so the more you send to us the more money you make when they sign up.
For people not in the United Kingdom who would like to earn a reward for referrals, please contact us on +44 208 540 2300 or m3@mydeo.com and we will most certainly be able to organise a reward that suits you.
As always, any other questions are welcome, so please do not hesitate to contact us by phone or email.
Posted in Announcements | Tagged earn, high street vouchers, m3, referral | Leave a Comment »
Mydeo m3 uploading options and explanations
Below is a list of the various different options we have for uploading media on to the CDN and a brief explanation of each.
Web upload
Most users will be able to use the web upload to get content on to the CDN. This is the simplest way to get started. Once you have logged into your m3 account just go to the ‘upload media’ page, browse for your file and click upload. Once that is done the file will appear in your ‘media manager’. This method of uploading is only suitable with a reliable internet connection as it cannot resume a failed upload like the desktop uploader.
Desktop uploader
Our desktop uploader is a convenient way to upload to your m3 account without having to go to the web to do so. It takes a few seconds to install and can be found on the ‘upload media’ page from within your m3 account. The desktop uploader is ideal for anyone using a Windows based PC but specifically for those with unreliable internet connections as it can resume your upload if the connection momentarily drops for any reason and those with large files or lots of files to upload. You can also upload bigger files than the web upload and queue as many as you like.
FTP
While we encourage people to use either the web upload form or the desktop uploader we can supply customers with FTP accounts to get their content onto the CDN. This takes place outside of m3 and we have a separate system for stats retrieval but the same information will be available to you. We do understand that sometimes it is necessary for customers to use FTP so if you do need it please feel free to contact us to discuss this.
m3api
For the more technically inclined out there, we have developed a full API for m3 which will allow you not only to upload your media from your own applications but take advantage of all the additional functionality m3 has to offer. Now you can develop your own web site or software that makes full use of your very own share of a global CDN, and keep track of your usage in the m3 dashboard. Be sure to check out the m3api developer centre, and download our sample project to get started.
Customer origin
Some customers already have their own servers and manage their content on those servers. Customer origin is simple a way for the CDN to gather that content from your servers and distribute it throughout the network. This of course does require you have your own servers.
If you have any questions about any of these methods for uploading, please do not hesitate to contact us on m3@mydeo.com – we would love to hear from you.
Posted in Announcements, Articles | Tagged desktop connector, m3, m3api, uploading | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2009 by Richard
Download our sample project for an even quicker start!
We’ve put together a sample project that demonstrates how easy it is to get started with the API. In this first, basic sample project, we demonstrate the creation of a Helper Library to help you centralise calls to our API within your own solution, and how to validate an m3 customer’s credentials via the API.
What the sample project contains:
- Barebones ‘Helper Library’ to make authentication easier
- Lots of inline comments to help you extend the helper library
- Code samples to help you if you’re behind a proxy, or developing a desktop application
Download Details:
When you’ve downloaded the sample project be sure to checkout the API Developer Centre for more resources.
If you’d like to see other functionality demonstrated, or code in different languages, please get in touch and let us know.
Posted in Announcements, Technical | Tagged api, download, m3api | Leave a Comment »
Mydeo now have the ability to collect content from your servers and deliver it via the Limelight CDN. This is what is known as customer origin. Basically, your server will become part of the network and you will not have to upload your content anymore. This is particularly useful for people who already manage content on their own servers and do not want to do it in two locations – it is a great way to switch to using a CDN without the major hassle of uploading everything. We can set up a customer origin for any customer who is on an m3 plan and has their own server where the content will be hosted. If you would like more information about this or anything else, please do not hesitate to contact us on m3@mydeo.com.
Posted in Announcements | Tagged cdn, customer origin, LLNW, m3, uploading, video streaming | Leave a Comment »
One of the major factors that affect the performance of your website delivery is the distance between the end user and your web server. With this in mind it makes sense to try and get your content as close to your users as possible. A content delivery network (CDN) is a great way to do this.
A CDN is a collection of web servers positioned around the world. When a user makes a request for a file, the CDN automatically determines which server is closest to that user and delivers the files from that location.
CDNs are mainly used for the delivery of video because of the videos need for high bandwidth capabilities to deliver properly. However, there are lots of other possibilities for the use of CDNs. You could deliver images, stylesheets, scripts, animations etc. By delivering these from CDN you will drastically increase the speed of your website.
Typically in the past it has been cost prohibitive for smaller companies to use a CDN to host their content for website optimization because of minimum throughput commitments being multiple terabytes and contract length being a year or even longer in some cases. M3 eliminates this problem. With plans starting at 25GBs of throughput any one can use a CDN to optimize their website. M3 uses the Limelight Networks CDN which is widely known as one of the biggest and best in the world so you can always be sure that your content is being delivered on a top class network which will certainly increase the delivery speed of any media. You can view our pricing here https://m3.mydeo.com/Business/plans.aspx and sign up for a trial at www.mydeo.com.
If you have any questions please feel free to write to us on m3@mydeo.com
Posted in Articles | Tagged cdn, limelight, LLNW, m3, streaming | Leave a Comment »
