Programmer’s testimony

I finally got it ! I managed to activate an example of the class Hello Word in tandem with Xuggle and Red5.

Now, how does it work? In the internet browser I start the application which publishes the image from the digital camera of my laptop. This image is then being converted (processed?) on the server by means of Xuggle. In this way the net surfers are able to see in their browsers the target image that has been processed by a server. Welcome to the new era in the multimedia web applications!

It seems to me that this application opens a window of new, amazing opportunities. For example, we can image a video conference which allows the participants to see each other’s if they were actually sitting together at one table:). Another possibility might be the server recognizing the users face and, as a result, greeting him with his name, nickname or some other familiar phrase. Or, for example, let’s say we visit the tourist agency website. We start our laptop’s web cam and, after a while, we could see the blissful image of ourselves resting in a hammock hanging between trees on the beautiful beach far away.

There is no doubt that the image of lying in a hammock is far more tempting than sitting at the computer desk. But let’s go back to details. What is actually going on in the server area? The server – Red5 – receives the video from the user. This video is in the form of a data stream. It might contain an image, music or other data. The video stream is, of course, compressed. The server’s is now required to decompress it so that we receive the successive shots (and this is the task performed by Xuggle and FFmpeg). In fact it reminds of the old-fashioned film tape, which has still been in use for movie-making in Hollywood.

As a result of a video’s decompression we receive a sequence of pictures. What the server does next depends entirely of the imagination and goals of the web-site designers. Then the server compresses the sequence of pictures, thus creating a brand new video – a new data stream. The server can save the results of its operation, or create and access enabling an online transfer.

Obviously this method can be also used for the processing of sound. For instance, we can introduce some changes in popular communicators, such as Skype by adding the users’ favourite music to the background, or creating other sounds typical for cafe, pub or other popular meeting places.

As you can see, the server, which is supposed to perform so many tasks, may be overloaded: it is responsible for decompression and compression of the audio / video stream, as well as processing images or sounds. During the system testing , the overload of my laptop went up to 10%. However, we should keep in mind that the server is performing a new operation, something that has never been done before . Something that might actually become a key to success. Personally I am convinced that the expected results are worth its costs, and it pays off to risk an occasional overload.

In my next article I am going to explain how to start and application Xuggle Hello World on the server Red5.