How to create your own webcam feed
To day I’m going to show you all how to create a a cheap web cam feed from machine. This is quite easy to do if you follow the steps. 
First of all I’ll start with the media servers. In oder to broad cast your video (any type) you need to have a media server which is the one which actually broad casts the video feed. For that you have various sorts of media servers. For example – Flash media server for flash video streaming, Helix server for real media streaming, Windows media encoder (acts both as server and encoder) for windows media player and so forth. from the above list the only thing which come in a truly low price is the WME (Windows media encoder). And the Flash media server costs around 7000$ (if you willing to pay that much can you send me a copy as well 
.
But since Microsoft is Microsoft, I’ll be using a separate media server, called the VLC media server. (all of you know VLC right? If not, you are either new to the internet or you are too old to use a com ) For those who doesn’t know about VLC, its completely free, reliable and is easy to work with. When installing make sure you install the Firefox plug in for VLC. All you have to do is to check the tick for installing Firefox plug in.
Now you can open the VLC player through Firefox. You can also play the media on media player as well, but media player has a long buffer time and VLC player has a major advantage. It’s a cross platform media player, meaning it works great in Linux and other OS s, even in Mac. (haven’t tested them my self except for Ubuntu and windows.)
Now you have to create a page embedding the VLC player. Create a new html page and embed the following code.
<embed type=”application/x-vlc-plugin” name=”VLC” autoplay=”yes”
loop=”no” volume=”100″ width=”640″ height=”480″ target=”http://10.2.1.163:1234/”>
The width and height is the width and height of the player display. The target is the location of the VLC server location. The full html page would look like this.
<html>
<head>
<title>VLC</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<div id=”Layer1″ style=”position:absolute; width:640px; height:480px; left:192px; top:80px; z-index:-1″>
<embed type=”application/x-vlc-plugin” name=”VLC” autoplay=”yes”
loop=”no” volume=”100″ width=”640″ height=”480″ target=”http://10.2.1.163:8080/”>
</div>
</center>
</body>
</html>
Now for the VLC server. Run VLC player. (Its both server and player integrated in one package) Now open file (if you are streaming a file in your hard, else choose another tab. DirectShow for webcams) remember to tick the Stream/Save cheack box. Which will give you the option of Stream/save settings.
Go to the save settings and follow what I have marked.
Make sure you have marked play locally and HTTP check boxes.
Play locally – play the out put in your local machine
HTTP – broadcast in HTTP. If the address you gave is blank it will use you IP address. Remember the port no. (You’ll need it soon.)
Encapsulation Method – The video and audio codec depends on the encapsulation method. You might not get a proper out put when you mix the wrong codec with the encapsulation.
Transcoding option – Choose thee codec carefully. Change the bit rate depending on the bandwidth. (If your using this in a network.) Play around with the bandwidth till you get the perfert result you want or least some thing close to it.
Then run it and see if it displays the out put.
Now remember the IP and the port we gave in the html code?
<embed type=”application/x-vlc-plugin” name=”VLC” autoplay=”yes”
loop=”no” volume=”100″ width=”640″ height=”480″ target=”http://10.2.1.163:1234/”>
Change it according to what you have given. If you kept the HTTP address empty use you Local IP. – target=”http://yourip:port/
Now run the html page and see.. J
If your running on a local area net work you might want have a server running in you machine. A simple http server such as apache would do fine.
You can set it up over the net so others can see you. I ll tell you it in the next post.
INTERESTING…
Hi Kasun
Great article, just what I was looking for. Now just waiting for the “You can set it up over the net so others can see you. I ll tell you it in the next post.” bit, do you think you’ll get round to writing it???
Cheers
Baz