AVChat Software Product Blog

By default Red5 0.7.0 stores its logs into the log folder (/opt/red5/log/ on Linux or C:\Program Files\Red5\log\ on Windows) but unless you are running Red5 as a service on Windows you will never see any log files in that folder.

Here is what you need to do:

• make sure the log folder mentioned above exists and it is writable. If you compile Red5 yourself the log folder is not created, you need to manually create it.
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the path for the red5 general log from: ../log/red5.log to: log/red5.log (leave the path unchanged if you are running Red5 as a service on Windows)
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the path for the error log from: ../log/error.log to: log/error.log (leave the path unchanged if you are running Red5 as a service on Windows )
• edit Red5/conf/logback.xml and change the logging level for the org.red5.server.net.rtmp.RTMPHandler logger from OFF to DEBUG. This will ensure any errors that happen while a user is connecting to the Red5 server are properly logged in the log files.

There you go, you should now Restart the Red5 server and look for your newly created logs in Red5/log.

This file: Red5/conf/logback.xml controls the logging for the entire Red5 server, but Red5 applications might have their own logging configuration file. Such a file (if any ) should be located at Red5/webapps/application_name/WEB-INF/classes/logback.xml .

Things might change in future versions of Red5 so I will keep this post updated

We got a lot of questions regarding the possibility of screen sharing so here you go, a simple public explanation:

Screen sharing is possible in Flash video chat applications by using third party screen sharing drivers. What these drivers do is they simulate a web cam that uses the desktop screen as a video feed.

There are 3 such drivers right now:

• VH Screen Capture Driver (http://www.hmelyoff.com/index.php?section=8) which is free for private use.
• the Live Output feature present in the Camtasia Recorder that ships with Camtasia Studio (http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasiatrial.asp). Camtasia Studio is a comercial sofware and the actual bundle contains much more than just the Camtasia Recorder.
• UScreenCapture (http://umediaserver.net/umediaserver/download.html), freeware for any use

There are several important differences between the 3 drivers above but that will probably make the subject of another future post.

For one to share his screen in a Flash video chat application he would have to install one of those drivers, then login into the chat software and change his video capture driver (right click->settings->video tab) to the newly installed screen sharing driver. This way when he will start his webcam the images/frames will come from the screen sharing driver.

All drivers above will work just fine with both AVChat and AVConference.

Here are 3 tips for when doing screen sharing in a Flash video chat application:

• use 2 monitors: on one you put the application, window or element that you want to share, on the other you put the Flash video chat application which most probably will also display your screen video feed using the screen-share driver.
• increase the captured video resolution in your screen sharing video chat software to at least 320×240. When sharing areas of your screen smaller than 320×240 it will be very difficult for your viewers to keep track of the elements on your screen.
• There is a difference between the area (resolution) requested by your video chat software from the driver and the area (resolution) which is captured by the screen sharing drivers. The screen sharing driver might capture the entire screen, but the video chat software might request only a 640×480 area. In this case the driver might 1) stretch down the whole screen to fit 640×480 or 2) provide only the 640×480 area around the mouse (VH) or 3) provide only the 640×480 area around the center of the screen (Live Output and UScreenCapture).

It also worth mentioning here that Adobe has a special version of the Flash Player which does screen sharing out of the box. This special version is only available when used with their BRIO application/service available now in beta on labs.adobe.com. So if you want to do screen sharing, without using a third party driver, directly from a Flash Player application right now you are limited to using BRIO.

May 22, 2008 update: UScreenCapture added to the list.