For the past couple weeks I’ve been working with the IMB developing a web application for them that allows real-time streaming of video from missionaries on the field to churches in the States. While the missionary broadcasts a video stream they can communicate with the viewers via a chat interface.
Today we tried my tool for the first time with a large group of youth with International World Changers that is working high in the Andes mountains of Ecuador. They streamed back to their home churches in the US and we had 17 groups watching. It was great to see something that was only an idea a year ago, some sketches on my notepad two months ago, and code on my screen 3 weeks ago actually used in a real-world scenario.
Due to their remote location, the group was using a satellite phone to broadcast the video feed. They did two broadcasts, one to EST churches and one to CST churches an hour later. To see more about this student group’s trip head over to IWCStories.com.
For the techies out there, here are some details on how the program works. It was written entirely in Flash ActionScript 3.0 and uses the Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) to stream the video and manage the chatting. The missionary on the field uses Adobe Flash Media Encoder (FME) to encode from their camera and push the stream to the FMS. I opted to use FME to encode instead of the Flash player because it provides much better quality as a stand-alone application and with the On2 VP6 codec.
