Here is the setup:
remote site has video cameras that feed to a central box (basically a PC but
proprietary)
site sends out single video feed in H.264
site will accept commands to change the camera that is in the feed being sent
out.
I have a central monitoring center that is run on a web based monitoring
software using flash.
I want to be able to feed the video to the flash player and display it.

can this be done? would I need to change the video codec used or is there a
way to convert it using the Flash Media Server?
or would I have to write my own server to do this?

I am trying to figure this out before I spend a large amount of time learning
the Flash Media Server.

Thanks
Jim Fee
Viking Electronic Service

It could be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video
will need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or
Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as
those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually
encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and
uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp
packets.

About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you
might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media
Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish
the stream.

It can be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video will
need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or
Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as
those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually
encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and
uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp
packets.

About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you
might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media
Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish
the stream.

It can be done, but as you suspected, FMS doesn't support H.264 The video will
need to be encoded with on2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark, and the audio to mp3 or
Nellymoser Asao. Really, this has more to do with the Flash player than FMS, as
those are the only codecs supported by the player (FMS doesn't actually
encode/decode anything, it just pushes bits around)

If we're talking about real time here (rather than transcoding to files and
uploading those to the FMS server)) you need to push the data to FMS as rtmp
packets.

About the box the cameras feed... what OS is it running? I'm wondering if you
might use Flix Live ( http://on2.com/consumer/flixlive ) or Adobe Flash Media
Encoder ( still in beta, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fme/) to publish
the stream.

They would be real time video feeds. The box is third party, so I don't really
know what the OS is, and I am sure they won't change the codec for us
(unfortunately).

What about using Director/Shockwave to view the video on the client (assuming
I can find a server to use as traffic cop)?

Just so you don't spend too much effort on me, this is all stuff to try and
produce a proof of concept for a prospective partner. I appriciate any time
and knowledge you can spare but don't go nuts. I was just hoping that this
would not be a first for someone and they might have some insights.

Thanks again for your response.

[b]
They would be real time video feeds. The box is third party, so I don't
really know what the OS is, and I am sure they won't change the codec for us
(unfortunately).[/b]

About the OS, my reason for asking is I'm wondering what the possibilities for
broadcasting the stream right to FMS might be. If we want a true live stream to
be published to FMS (without developing new software to do it), our options are
the Flashplayer, or one of the commercially available encoding/publishing tools
like FlixLive or FME. It would be ideal if you can run one of those on the box
handling the cameras, that would be the fastest and most efficient approach. If
we can't do that, we need to first send the stream to another server where we
can get it ready for FMS.

[b]
What about using Director/Shockwave to view the video on the client (assuming
I can find a server to use as traffic cop)?[/b]

I don't work with Director, but there shouldn't be much difference from flash
in the way netconnections and netstreams are handled. If the question is "can
we push other sorts of video through FMS if Shockwave is the client", well, I'm
not 100% sure (never tired anything like that), but my gut tells me no. First,
I'm pretty sure FMS wouldn't know what to do with the incoming data or how to
pakc it up fo the clients. Even if FMS was willing to take the bits and spit
them out (I'm not a software engineer, so I don't really know how that part
works), other media formats are going to have different sorts of headers and
different packet structures, and I'd bet that Shockwave won't know what to do
with it.

[b]Just so you don't spend too much effort on me, this is all stuff to try and
produce a proof of concept for a prospective partner. I appriciate any time
and knowledge you can spare but don't go nuts. I was just hoping that this
would not be a first for someone and they might have some insights.[/b]

No problem... I like to see people get FMS to work in new envoironments... and
if the time spent gets someone else on board with the Flash platform it helps
me in the end (greater Flash media adoptation = more work for Jay).