Macromedia Flash Server - 'Shared Browsing' concept in FMS2

Author

'Shared Browsing' concept in FMS2

Owen van Dijk

2006-07-19, 1:12 pm

Hi All,

I'm currently working on a new concept called 'Shared Video Watching'
for Fabchannel. The idea is the following:

- Given the persons A, B, C are registered users on Fabchannel.com
- Person A goes to Fabchannel.com and logs in
- Person A has Person B on his buddy list
- He sees Person B and Person C are online too
- He chooses a concert from the concert list and start watching his
favourite band
- Person B sees his buddy ( Person A ) is watching a cool concert
- Person B asks permission to his buddy to 'join' the concert
- Person A sees his budy asking permission and grants it
- They now can watch the concert together, Person A being 'the leader'
and Person B the follower. It means that if Person A decides to watch
another concert or seeks through the playing concert, Person B gets to
see every 'move'

In this use-case I've let out Person C, but you can imagine that he
can ask authorisation to Person A or B to 'join' too, the more the
merrier :-)

We're having some internal discussions how to implement all this:

IMPLEMENTATION A
I'm leaning towards implementing a Chat-like application where users
are kept synchronized by subscribing to a single SharedObject onSync
event handler and sending the seek and play events of Person A to this
SharedObject. Groups of 'buddies' watching together are simply using a
room/instance in the Chat application. Each person is connecting and
requesting it's own 'stream' on the server and the server acts as a
'dumb' stream server.

IMPLEMENTATION B
The other solution is to have the server publish a live stream called
"PersonA" when Person A requests a concert and then let Person B and C
and D and E connect to the same live stream ( "PersonA" ). Person A
never connects to the livestream but 'updates' the live stream when he
seeks or chooses another concert ( which is another FLV file stored on
the server ).

Now i've been going through the documentation and i read the Flashcomm
book (especially the part on publishing live streams,
SynchronizedEvents and ChatRooms, btw the SynchronizedEvents code is
supposed to be online but can't find it?) and i have some questions:

- Synchronisation is key in this concept, there has to be low latency
/ delay for this to work. Are there any 'gotchas' or 'don't forget to
look at this'? Given that there are usually a few hundred users
simultaneously on our site and we're using fairly large FLV files (
prerecorded, not live, minimum 700-800MB ) i reckon there might be
issues to watch out for
- Are there example applications/code/technotes that could be used as
a reference for this application?
- We have features that we like to implement after this demo (
recording of the whole 'shared browsing session', adding webcam/audio
features, deeplinking ), are they essential in the architecture for
this demo or can we postpone and revisit after this simplified demo?
- We're using a Edge(2)/Origin solution, does that give an advantage
over IMPLEMENTATION A over B or vice-verse and are there any special
configuration settings that are useful?

Sincerely,

--
Owen van Dijk
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Stefan Richter

2006-07-19, 1:12 pm

Short answer from me:
Do it via SO.send or onSync, I've tried similar apps with NS and it hasn't
worked well.

Stefan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: flashcomm-bounces-1Ss2GqJETD3yZ38Mhd3e/9ZfFG6BLHNm@public.gmane.org
> [mailto:flashcomm-bounces-1Ss2GqJETD3yZ38Mhd3e/9ZfFG6BLHNm@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of
> Owen van Dijk
> Sent: 19 July 2006 14:40
> To: FlashComm Mailing List
> Subject: [FlashComm] 'Shared Browsing' concept in FMS2
>
> Hi All,
>
> I'm currently working on a new concept called 'Shared Video Watching'
> for Fabchannel. The idea is the following:
>
> - Given the persons A, B, C are registered users on Fabchannel.com
> - Person A goes to Fabchannel.com and logs in
> - Person A has Person B on his buddy list
> - He sees Person B and Person C are online too
> - He chooses a concert from the concert list and start
> watching his favourite band
> - Person B sees his buddy ( Person A ) is watching a cool concert
> - Person B asks permission to his buddy to 'join' the concert
> - Person A sees his budy asking permission and grants it
> - They now can watch the concert together, Person A being 'the leader'
> and Person B the follower. It means that if Person A decides
> to watch another concert or seeks through the playing
> concert, Person B gets to see every 'move'
>
> In this use-case I've let out Person C, but you can imagine
> that he can ask authorisation to Person A or B to 'join' too,
> the more the merrier :-)
>
> We're having some internal discussions how to implement all this:
>
> IMPLEMENTATION A
> I'm leaning towards implementing a Chat-like application
> where users are kept synchronized by subscribing to a single
> SharedObject onSync event handler and sending the seek and
> play events of Person A to this SharedObject. Groups of
> 'buddies' watching together are simply using a room/instance
> in the Chat application. Each person is connecting and
> requesting it's own 'stream' on the server and the server
> acts as a 'dumb' stream server.
>
> IMPLEMENTATION B
> The other solution is to have the server publish a live
> stream called "PersonA" when Person A requests a concert and
> then let Person B and C and D and E connect to the same live
> stream ( "PersonA" ). Person A never connects to the
> livestream but 'updates' the live stream when he seeks or
> chooses another concert ( which is another FLV file stored on
> the server ).
>
> Now i've been going through the documentation and i read the
> Flashcomm book (especially the part on publishing live
> streams, SynchronizedEvents and ChatRooms, btw the
> SynchronizedEvents code is supposed to be online but can't
> find it?) and i have some questions:
>
> - Synchronisation is key in this concept, there has to be low
> latency / delay for this to work. Are there any 'gotchas' or
> 'don't forget to look at this'? Given that there are usually
> a few hundred users simultaneously on our site and we're
> using fairly large FLV files ( prerecorded, not live, minimum
> 700-800MB ) i reckon there might be issues to watch out for
> - Are there example applications/code/technotes that could be
> used as a reference for this application?
> - We have features that we like to implement after this demo
> ( recording of the whole 'shared browsing session', adding
> webcam/audio features, deeplinking ), are they essential in
> the architecture for this demo or can we postpone and revisit
> after this simplified demo?
> - We're using a Edge(2)/Origin solution, does that give an
> advantage over IMPLEMENTATION A over B or vice-verse and are
> there any special configuration settings that are useful?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> --
> Owen van Dijk
> ________________________________________
_______
> FlashComm-1Ss2GqJETD3yZ38Mhd3e/9ZfFG6BLHNm@public.gmane.org
> To change your subscription options or search the archive:
> http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm
>
> Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software
> Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training
> http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
>

________________________________________
_______
FlashComm-1Ss2GqJETD3yZ38Mhd3e/9ZfFG6BLHNm@public.gmane.org
To change your subscription options or search the archive:
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcomm

Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software
Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training
http://www.figleaf.com
http://training.figleaf.com