Requirements for streaming flash video?

Factual Questions
1

What exactly are the requirements for streaming Flash video?

Assume a windows based server running the latest .net and IIS.

I know I can write and a then embed a flash movie player on my site and essentially run a progressive download from the site, but that’s not streaming.

Do I need some sort of specialized software to stream the video to a flash player? Is this something I can write up in .net?

2

You’ll need a streaming media server installed on your machine.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934518

Edit… Looks like microsoft does not support streaming FLV’s - hmmm - look around for a streaming media server. There may be a work around though - perhaps a simple one, but no support by default.

Anything you write in .NET would be just handling a progressive download on the server side & not true streaming.

3

What about h.264 content?

4

Regardless, if you want to stream content, you need to install a streaming server.

Google some info on Microsoft’s streaming media server & see what you will need to install & configure it either to stream flv video files or H.264 vids - it is probably as easy as adding a MIME type to the server so that it sends the correct headers for the files.

5

I imagine you’re looking for Adobe’s Flash Media Streaming Server. That’s what it does: stream FLVs. You can buy it ($1000 if I recall), or use one of their long list of hosting partners. (I’m not affiliated, nor do I stream FLVs)

Adobe has a whole bunch of “Media Server” apps for serving up different kind of things.

I imagine you can find an open source version of the Flash Media Streaming Server as well. Random google hit shows: http://mammothserver.org/

6

The big question is whether you need to encode to flash in real-time or not, followed by the resolution of your stream.