Hi all-

What is a good FPS (frames per second) rate for streaming video over the web?
Right now I get 30 FPS but the picture is still blurry when people move across
the camera (Sony Handycam). The picture itself is very clear, when nobody
moves.

I know I 30 FPS (which is max FPS for this camera) from the following:

function changeFps(){
client_cam.setMode(500, 500, 30);
fps_lbl.text = "FPS Your Getting: "+client_cam.fps+" fps";

So, anyone know if my FPS are to low. I know when I game I get 50 - 80 FPS. Do
I need to be up in this area? Lso, if my FPS are OK, how do I clear up motion
on the camera?

Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.

Think about it like this... NTSC television runs at 29.97 fps, so I would
imagine your handycam is running at 29.97. I don't think running your stream at
a higher framerate will help any, since the player is only getting 29.97 fps
from the camera.

When you say the picture isn't clear, do you mean it's furry, blocky, or
having interlacing problems (horizontal lines in the image)?

Love it when you respond to my questions Jay, thanks again.

I mostly get blocky squares around the image itself (usually a person) when
they walk by the camera. When they run by (I work in a school) I get more of
the interlacing problems.

But the picture is very clear if they are just standing in front of the
camera, with little or no movement.

I found (and used) the

camera.setQuality(300000,0);

and it seems to help. Any other tips or tricks?

I'm guessing there are a couple of issues at play here.

First, what are the native resoutions of the camera you are using? I can't say
I've woked with camcorders before, but I'm guessing the lowest native
resolution is 640x480. If that's the case, the flashplayer has to scale the
image down before it is displayed, which would explain the blockiness.

It looksto me like you're trying to make the video image 500x500. If the
camera doesn't support that resolution directly, the flashplayer again has to
scale the image, which makes things ugly. When there is no motion, the player
doesn't have to work as hard, which is likely there reason that the picture is
better when there's no motion.

Ideally, the dimensions of your stream image and video object will be the same
as one of the native resolutions of the camera. If your camera doesn't support
lower resolutions than 640x480, you might want to look into signal conversion
hardware.

As for the interlacing problems, AFAIK you'll need to de-interlace the signal
before it gets fed to the flashplayer to get rid of the lines. I've found that
webcams don't create this problem, so I'm guessing that the camera driver
de-interlaces the image before it makes it to the Flashplayer. I'm not a
hardware guy, so I might be wrong on that (it might be the camera, not the
driver that does the de-interlacing)... so don't take my word on that one as
the absolute fact.

As for quality, I wouldn't go so high. The quality setting is in Bps, so your
300000 figure is telling the flashplayer to publish at about 2.2mbps. That will
stream smoothly if your viewers are on the same LAN as the server, or if
everyone has very fast internet connections.