How to publish multiple bit rate(MBR) live video?

Question

I've searched quite a few threads:

http://www.developsigner.com/blog/2009/05/28/multi-bitrate-live-streaming-with-fmle-adobe-flash-media-live-encoder

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/27371

dynamicStream.addStream("livestream1",200);
dynamicStream.addStream("livestream2",400);
dynamicStream.addStream("livestream2",600);


vid.play2(dynamicStream);

But all of them are talking about playing multiple bit rate live video,

my question is how I can publish multiple bit rate live videos in the first place?

Answer 1

Don't know what you're looking for exactly can you be a bit more specific about your setup, that is are you using Red5 as the RTMP server or FMS further what's the problem with using the flash media encoder specified in the instructions you linked in order to create a file with multiple bit-rate encodings, from what I've seen in the demos for FMS the media was in separate flv files I believe and would switch which one it was streaming data from on the fly.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/fms/2/docs/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

Are you attempting to publish a single bit-rate file then have it streamed at multiple lower bit-rates, if so this other post may help you:

Publish webcam feed to Flash Media Server

Good luck hope this is helpful, Shaun

Answer 2

The option to publish multiple bitrates is in your encoding software, often Flash Media Live Encoder if you're not using a dedicated hardware solution.

In FMLE3, the setting is in the 'Encoding Options' tab under the 'Video' section; right beneath 'Input Size' you should see a collection of fields labeled 'Bit Rate', of which you can check up to three.

However, this still leaves you with the problem of how to specify where you're publishing each of your streams, since you're only given a single edit box to type in your destination stream name. The solution for this is found at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashMediaLiveEncoder/3.0/Using/WSA7473A4B-12E2-4d43-A70F-2949CD87732F.html:

Under the Preset menu, select an option for multi-bit streaming for either VP6 or H.264 video, if desired. Otherwise, enter your own custom encoding values. Under Bit Rate and Output Size, the values for each stream are numbered 1-2 or 1-3. The numeric value is the index of the encoded stream. You can use this index value, represented as %i, in the stream name and filename as a differentiator. Other parameters are available as well. Under Output, specify a stream name and filename. When encoding multi-bit rate streams, you can either use semicolons to separate unique stream names or you can use a single stream name with parameters. For the filename, you can use parameters to differentiate the streams. Note: For the stream name, if you use both semicolons and parameters, the parameters are ignored.

So, to achieve a set of MBR streams like the ones you specified in your code, you can specify your collection of MBR streams as either:

livestream%1

or:

livestream1;livestream2;livestream3

When you have all the MBR checkboxes checked, and the stream name specified to include all of the streams you're broadcasting, you'll be able to use code like you provided to provide a player with enough data to switch between streams.