Over the last few years I've had a need to send out live video feed from a desktop. There are some good (I won't say great because I use them on a daily basis) "conference call" type screen sharing applications and some even use Flash to send that video.. but how can you send out a screen capture feed like you can with a web cam to your own Flash application? .. it is possible, and it doesn't cost anything. I'll assume that you have access to some sort of server or technology for broadcasting a live web cam feed in the first place. You can do this with the
Flash Media Server or
Red5 for starters. Either one allows a Flash application to connect and send live video and audio feed to the server. Traditionally the A/V feed comes from a web cam, and traditionally "screen capture" for Flash means saving video from screen capture to a FLV or SWF file. That's different from taking the live feed and broadcasting it.
If you want to stream out live screen capture video then here's one easy way (there are others..) for Windows users:
Go here and read up on the VH Screen Capture Driver. Then
download it and install it.
Then go to the web page where you would normally broadcast your web cam feed (via the Flash Player..) and right click on the Flash content. Choose the VHScrCap feed from the list of "Cameras".
Yeah.. and if you noticed in that little screen shot you can also broadcast from a TV capture card straight into the Flash Player... just like it's a web cam feed.
