I'm looking for a barcode reader using a webcam for my shopping guide website with a redirection after scan to my search engine.
I found a lot of things for mobile apps, but nothing working good for the desktop web browsers.
This flex component doesn't work on my apple display webcam : http://www.renaun.com/flex2/BarcodeReader/BarcodeReader.html and I really need a tool who works with many desktop cams. (like the mac app http://www.delicious-monster.com/)
Wich technology can I use for that or do you have a little script to do that?
Thank you for your feedbacks :)
Have a look on the following:
Flex barcode components
It may help.
I want to save published streams on my application server, so I can use the videos to create a webcast presentation later.
Could you please give me some directions to do this? Thanks in advance.
P.S. I may be sounded like I already have an application up and runnning, but I don't. I'm at the planning phase at the moment and trying to decide what/which technology to use.
I hope I get you right...
Recording webcam should be no problem (there are a lot of tutorials), but for recording the desktop (or anything outside your application) you will have to use Adobe AIR, as Flex apps don't allow screenshots or screen recordings because of security limitations.
Before converting Flash into iPhone app, I still need to understand some questions.
1) Is the converted app able to read XML code from the website like RSS or custom script?
2) 3rd party API are not allowed to be download but assets like Images, sounds or reading data from MySQL db is allow?
3) Anyone port from Flex 4 yet?
1) Yes. Almost all of the regular Flex and AIR APIs still work.
2) Yes. You can download assets just not load and run them.
3) You can package a Flex 4 app for iOS but performance and usability may not be great right now. The engineering team working on fixing that.
More details:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/mobile/faq.html#otherdevices
I'm looking for a solution for capturing audio from a user's microphone and posting it (preferably as MP3) to a server. I need something that I can embed in a web page.
I've seen where Flash can do this, but I understand that this approach requires expensive server-side software from Adobe. I'm not aware of whether Silverlight may provide any capabilities to assist with this.
I'm curious what others have done. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
You can do it with Flash and either Red5 or haXeVideo or the server, both Open Source. Regarding offering a final MP3 to the user, you will need something else because these 2 tools only record to FLV format due to the licenses needed to encode MP3s. You can use something on the server such as FFMPEG for the transformation, but still, read the small print regarding MP3s.
Good luck
Juan
SilverLight 4 now has the ability to record audio. http://blog.ondrejsv.com/post/Audio-recorder-Silverlight-4-sample.aspx shows encoding PCM to WAV
Silverlight does not have this capability, currently (or in their upcoming 3.0 release). Flash would be the way to go.
A quick glance at the present-day internet would seem to indicate that Adobe Flash is the obvious choice for embedding video in a web page. Is this accurate, or are they other effective choices? Does the choice of ASP.NET as a platform influence this decision?
Flash is certainly the most ubiquitous and portable solution. 98% of browsers have Flash installed. Other alternatives are Quicktime, Windows Media Player, or even Silverlight (Microsoft's Flash competitor, which can be used to embed several video formats).
I would recommend using Flash (and it's FLV video file format) for embedding your video unless you have very specific requirements as far as video quality or DRM.
Flash is usually the product of choice: Everyone has it, and using the JW FLV Player makes it relatively easy on your side.
As for other Video Formats, there are WMV and QuickTime, but the players are rather "heavy", not everyone might have them and they feel so 1990ish...
Real Player... Don't let me even start ranting about that pile of ...
The only other alternative of Flash that I would personally consider is Silverlight, which allows streaming WMV Videos. I found the production of WMV much better and easier than FLV because all Windows FLV Encoders I tried are not really good and stable, whereas pretty much every tool can natively output WMV. The problem with Silverlight is that no one has that Browser Plugin (yet?). There is also a player from JW.
One consideration would be whether video playback is via progressive download or streaming. If it's progressive download, then I would say use Flash because you get a wider audience reach.
For streaming wmv, it is out of the box functionality provided by Windows Media Services
For streaming flash, you will have to install a streaming server on your Windows box. Some options are:
Adobe Flash Media Server (Commercial)
Wowza Media Server (Free/Commercial)
Red5 Flash Server (Open Source)
If you have access to Microsoft Expression Encoder 2, you can use that to encode a video file and generate a Silverlight video player. Then if you have IIS 7, you can use Adaptive or Smooth Streaming also checkout Smooth HD for a really cool example.
You can also do streaming from the free Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service. It's connected to a Windows Live account.
A consideration is that the client will need to have Silverlight installed, just like Flash, but Flash has been around longer.
<object width="660" height="525"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WAQUskZuXhQ&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WAQUskZuXhQ&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="660" height="525"></embed></object>
I have worked for a company that developed a system for distributing media content to dedicated "players". It was web based and used ASP.NET technology and have tried almost every possible media format you can think of and your choice really comes down to asking yourself:
does it needs to play directly out of the box, or can I make sure that the components required to play the videos can be installed beforehand?
If your answer is that it needs to play out of the box then really your only option is flash (I know that it is not installed by default, but most will already have it installed)
If it is not a big issue that extra components are needed then you can go with formats that are supported by windows media player
The reason why windows media player falls into the second option is because for some browsers and some formats extra components must be installed.
We had the luxury that the "players" were provided by us, so we could go for the second option, however even we tried to convert as much as possible back to flash because it handles way better than windows media player
"Does the choice of ASP.NET as a platform influence this decision?"
Probably not.