How to bulid a new API for video conference

[soumyakollon1]

hello,

I want to know how can i build an API for the video conference.

What will be the requirement for that?

can we use php for that?? if yes please guide to me to do this?

[chrishea]

If you want to use video conferencing then there is some software available but mostly not free. (example: http://www.videowhisper.com/?p=PHP+Video+Conference

If you want to build an API, then you need to have the skills and experience to do it. This isn't a job for a novice. It is doubtful that anyone here has the specific experience that you are looking for. Even less likely that if they do that they are going to try to 'guide" you through an advanced development project like this.

[soumyakollon1]

Actually I need to develope a video chat application, in which it needs to display window with video/audio of both the persons who communicating each other.

what will be the requirement to develope this? any training module or tutorial is there, please suggest?

[mschroeder]

PHP is a server side language. It does not have access to the client machine. If you wanted to do something like this, you would need some kind of client based code (flash or java probably) which could possibly use php to drive some of the underlying functionality, chat, logging, authentication etc.

[digital-ether]

To retrieve the video/audio stream from the browser you need a browser plugin that has access to the webcam. The most common way to do this right now is with Flash. (I'm guessing you want this to run in the browser).

You'll need to write some ActionScript to get the video and audio from the webcam and stream it to a server. Then the server needs to be able to send that video/audio stream to the receiver of the video.

For the actionscript portion there are many examples online, or you may be able to find some open source code that does it.

For the server side, you need a server for streaming RTMP protocol (see http://www.adobe.com/devnet/rtmp.html and http://wiki.gnashdev.org/RTMP) such as Adobe Flash Streaming Server (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediastreaming/) which is proprietary or Red5 (written in Java) which is Open Source or other alternative.

You can write a RTMP server in PHP, but it would be re-inventing something in a language not meant for the task. RTMP streaming requires good IO, Memory utilization and networking which PHP is not meant for.

You may also want to look into XMPP, which is an Open Source Instant Messaging Protocol. There are also many existing examples and open source code around XMPP, even video and audio streaming such as with the OpenFire Server and RedFire Server.

Note that RedFire is the OpenFire XMPP server using Red5 to stream the video and audio wrapped in RTMP. It includes the whole sources for java based server and flash client.

[soumyakollon1]

Thank you for your detailed reply. Now I want to know more about XMPP.

Can I implement this OpenFire Server with Apache, Mysql, and PHP?

Is there any tutorial for this? I am a beginner in developing field .So please guide me.

[digital-ether]

Thank you for your detailed reply. Now I want to know more about XMPP.

Can I implement this OpenFire Server with Apache, Mysql, and PHP?

Is there any tutorial for this? I am a beginner in developing field .So please guide me.

Best resource would be xmpp.org. The best way to look into XMPP is to setup your own server, such as an OpenFire server.

Then install one of the existing open source XMPP clients (IM client supporting XMPP) on your desktop.

Then you can view the traffic sent between the XMPP client and server using a tool such as Wireshark (formerly Ethereal).

You can test the XMPP protocol from the command line also. Look up the XMPP specification for the commands to send.

Here is an example of sending XMPP to google talk. http://www.adarshr.com/papers/xmpp

Can I implement this OpenFire Server with Apache, Mysql, and PHP?

Is there any tutorial for this? I am a beginner in developing field .So please guide me.

OpenFire server primarily sends XML over TCP conforming to the XMPP specification or other media such as video and audio streams under specifications such as RTMP.
Apache is a webserver and primarily sends HTML over HTTP conforming to the HTML specifications.
So the two are separate and for different purposes. There are specifications such as BOSH which allows XMPP over HTTP, but I'm not sure if Apache is the best tool.

In other words, OpenFire runs by itseslf, it does not need Apache or MySQL or PHP. You can however integrate them for your needs, such as have Openfire write messages to MySQL, or talk to Apache and PHP.

I would not be able to show you through this forum how to do all this, neither can anyone else. You'll have to start researching XMPP, TCP, XML, OpenFire etc. over the web and asking specific questions in your progress.

Also get some books on these topics:

XMPP
TCP
ActionScript
RTMP

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