AVChat Software Product Blog

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AVChat  is pretty secure out of the box, however, there are steps you and your developers can take to make your AVChat installation even more secure. We have now grouped these steps in a NEW SERVICE we’ll offer called Secure your AVChat installation.  The service is priced at $199.  We will annalyze your AVChat and media server  installation and propose/implement security measures against a broad range of attacks.

These are some of the measures we will take:

• Secure the data exchange  between the clients and the media server by using rtmpe or rtmps instead of plain rtmp.
  RTMPS communication leverages the proven security of SSL to wrap your RTMP session. RTMPE-based communication offers some of the benefits of RTMPS, but not all. It trades performance and certificate-less communication for being a versioned protocol under private Adobe control, rtmpe is only available with Wowza and FMIS not with Red5.
• Secure connections to the media server by configuring and activating the token authentication mechanism in AVChat (will be available/detailed in the August build).
  The token based authentication ensures that only swf files from your web server are allowed to connect to your media server. To use it you need to manually configure and activate it.
• Secure the streams from being rebroadcasted.
  We can do that by placing a watermark/logo over them (see the watermarkForOtherPeoplesStreams var in avc_settings.xxx).
• Secure the admin AVChat’s area by limiting the ip’s from which admins can connect.
  AVChat  allows you to limit the ip from which admins are allowed to connect trough admin.swf  (seethe adminsAllowedFromTheseIps var in settings.asc on FMIS and avchat3.properties on Red5 and Wowza)
• SWF verification (FMIS only)
  Turning on and configuring swf verification on FMIS ensures that custom swf files (with altered or additional functioanlity, etc…) will never be able to connect to YOUR media server.
• Secure upload/download process
  The sending of files to rooms and individual users can be further secured by moving the upload folder to a non-public area on the web server.
• Secure access to some  scripts on the web server.
  Writeuserslist.xxx and  other scripts are only called/executed by the media server. It’s safe then to make them execute only when called by the media server (and not when called from a web browser) .
• Remove any unneeded media server applications
  Both Red5 and FMIS ship with default applications, we’ll consider removing them to no longer allow the permissive and well-known sample applications to run and be exploited.

Most of these measures can also be taken/implemented by you or your developers and we will try to post detailed information on each one of the above steps.

Securing such a complex product needs a lot of thinking as there are a lot of angles a hacker can take to attempt to disrupt the normal activity in the video chat.

We’ve been working lately on making AVChat function properly on mobile phones. In the images below you can see a Nexus One with AVChat 3 running perfectly in the phone’s browser and streaming someone’s cam.

login

rooms list

AVChat 3.0 on Nexus One

Unfortunately its not yet possible to broadcast your phone’s camera/mic.

This is just a proof of concept, but the modifications needed to run AVChat on Android will make their way into the next build.

We also see a lot of space for innovation in the mobile space with the recently announced Flash Player and AIR for mobiles, so hopefully we’ll have more great news to share with you in the future on this topic!

We used to solve all AVChat issues by email, and it was wrong because all the info we’ve shared by email is now locked in those private email discussions, and believe me there’s a lot of useful info in those emails!

That’s why we’ve now launched a proper, public, forum : http://avchat.net/forum/,  to make all that „problem solving info” available to everyone! The entire AVChat team will be answering questions in there so expect proper deep technical documented answers.

There are special areas for all our products including AVChat, the HD  video recorder and the audio recorder.

The private and personal support by email is still available to our customers, the forum is just an addition!

The May Build of AVChat 3 (due next week) will have support for the Speex audio codec introduced in Flash Player 10. This will mean better audio quality,lower latency and less bandwidth usage than before!

This is one of the reasons we’ve switched to Flash Player 10 for AVChat 3 starting with the April Build, other changes will include separate volume control for each web cam and proper behaviour when the users denies access to his web cam and mic.

The old codec we’ve been using so far in AVChat 3, the NellyMoser Asao codec, was introduced in Flash Player 6 and was licensed by Adobe from NellyMoser Inc. . Because NellyMoser Inc. had the full rights to the audio codec this made it hard and expensive for developers to convert files encoded with NellyMoser to AAC or MP3. This was one of the main complains against NellyMoser Asao.

The Speex codec, introduced in FP10, is optimized for voice and provides better audio quality using less bandwdith. It is also open souce so you can decode it and convert it to mp3 or aac (ffmpeg already decodes Speex) without needing any licenses. It also provides more levels (11) of quality as opposed to NellyMoserAsao (only 5).

In this table comparing compression rates for Nelly Moser Asao and Speex in Flash Player you can see that Speex at its highest setting needs half the bandwidth NellyMoser Asao uses at its highest setting:

We will update our article covering changing the audio quality in AVChat 3 in time for the release next week, however, no changes will be needed as the new build will default to using the new Speex codec for audio. Until next week you can test the new audio quality in our online demo of AVChat 3.

2009 has been a great year for us, we’ve learned a lot and we’ve made big progress as a company and we feel 2010 is going to be even better. Everybody is back now from their NYE vacation (support should be again up to speed) and we’re deciding on directions to follow in 2010 with our business and products. Here are some of them:

AVChat Instant Messenger is a new product we’re working on. We have a lot of great ideas for it, hopefully we will have something to show in March.

Each product will have it’s own website. We’ve already started doing that with HDFVR and soon the Flash Audio Recorder will also be moved to its own website. AVChat 3 will follow. This will allow us to provide more accurate and on topic  info on each product and also independently measure the interest for each product.

We’re going to offer better support trough a new forum and more support articles. Many of the supports requests we get are answered with information that would be useful for everyone, not just the person asking for support so we’re going to build a forum (where our team can answer questions) and encourage everyone to post their questions there. Personalized support by email will still be available.

We’re going to support the Wowza media server across all our products. HDFVR was our first product that worked on the Wowza media server. Wowza versions of our Flash Audio Recorder and AVChat 3 are ready we just need to launch them!

AVChat 3 updates. We have a few great features we want to add in the rooms management and users list department. There is also a long list of requested features we’re going to go trough. Support for the new YouTube AS3 API should be available soon, this will mean people will be able to post more than 1 YT video in the video chat.

Better and more  integrations. The AVChat 3 Module for phpFox 2 is almost ready (should be online in a few days), vBulletin 4 was just released and Joomla 1.6 is just around the corner. Expect many improvements in the integrations department and maybe some integrations for our other products like the HD Flash Video Recorder.

More blogging. Time allowing it we’re going to post more articles, web cam reviews, guides etc… .Good useful content on this blog is rather scarce (well, except for the tutorials/documentation articles) so we’re going to improve that.

This should keep us busy for the next 6 months. We’re having even bigger plans for the second half of the year! If you have any other ideas you can always drop us a line at contact@avchat.net, feedback is always welcomed here !

I am pleased to announce you the immediate availability of our new flagship product: AVChat 3, the successor to AVChat 2.

Launch AVChat 3.0 Demo

View Some More Screenshots

New Technology

AVChat 3 is developed using ActionScript 3. This allows us to develop much more powerful and fast applications than before.

New Features

We’ve listened to our vocal clients and added a lot of requested features like private video streams and emote icon packs but we’ve also added a lot of new stuff we’ve thought about internally. Users will now be able to join  multiple rooms at the same time, they will be able to share YouTube movies, upload pictures to rooms, watch video streams in full screen and much more.

Webmasters and site admins have not been forgotten either, the dynamic reduction in bandwidth feature will save a lot of bandwidth on the media server, the rooms management has been rethinked and room creation is much more easier, you now have access to a lot of information about each user and the media server including total bandwidth usage.

Check out a more complete list of AVChat 3 features on the Features Tour page.

Media Server Support

AVChat 3 is now available for Flash Media Interactive Server, but support for Red5, Wowza and rtmpd will be rolled out in the following weeks.

Pricing & Upgrading from AVChat 2

Previous AVChat 2 clients

Clients who have purchased AVChat 2 within the last 3 months (starting 9 March 09), will get a free upgrade to AVChat 3.

These are the upgrade prices for clients who have purchased AVChat 2 prior to 9 March 2009 :

• Upgrade from AVChat 2.x Lite to AVChat 3.x Lite: $47.5
• AVChat 2.x 40 to AVChat 3.x 40: $87.5
• AVChat 2.x 100 to AVChat 3.x: $127.5
• AVChat 2.x Unlimited to AVChat 3.x Unlimited: $199.5

You can order your upgrade from the pricing/purchase page!

New clients

• AVChat 3.x Lite (20 simultaneous users max ): $95
• AVChat 3.x with 40 simultaneous users max: $135
• AVChat 3.x with 100 simultaneous users max: $255
• AVChat 3.x with 200 simultaneous users max: $399
• AVChat 3.x with 500 simultaneous users max: $799
• AVChat 3.x with Unlimited simultaneous users: $1249

More details on the pricing/purchase page!

Pricing for integration modules/plugins/components

We have decided to charge separately for integration modules, plugins and components because a surprising amount of work goes into developing, maintaining and supporting these extensions.

Right now we offer integration kits for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5, Drupal 5 and 6 and osDate. Kits for Social Engine and vldPersonals will soon follow. Each of them will be priced at $49 and will be available when you purchase the standalone version of AVChat 3.

What happens with AVChat 2?

We will continue to sell and support it as we have until now. No major features will be added tough, updates will include mostly bug fixing and support for new Red5/FMS versions.

You can now follow us on Twitter:

@avchathq
http://www.twitter.com/avchathq

We will use the Twitter account to announce what we’re working on, new major and minor releases, news from the industry, etc… .

Also did I say we are working on AVChat 3 for a while and its almost ready!?

We have silently rolled out an update for our flash video recorder and player .

Here are the changes in the 1.1 version:

• 4 Java Script hooks added, one for each button in the recorder (more on this later)
• all strings can now be translated from the external en/videorecorder_en.xml
• userId variable was added in the settings file and it can also be passed via flash vars,the userId is passed back later to save_video_to_db.XXX
• 3 vars are now sent via GET to save_video_to_db.XXX, streamName, streamDuration and userId
• Flash Player detection code
• The name of the file to be played by the player can now be specified via both the avc_settings.XXX and via flash vars using the streamName variable

Bugs solved:

• sometimes the [save] button enabled itself up after saving the movie

If you have purchased the AVRecorder 1.0 bundle in the past, just drop us an email and we will send you the updated version!

AVChat 2.1 and AVConference 1.1 are now fully compatible with the free open source Red5 media server. Absolutely all the features in both softwares are implemented in the new Red5 versions.

Red5 is a free, open source, Java based, alternative to Adobe’s Flash Media Server. Altough the server is in pre-alpha there are many production-ready applications that work on Red5 and many have chosen to use Red5 because its free and open source.

To install Red5 you need a dedicated server. You can not install Red5 on a shared hosting plan. Red5 is available for both Windows and Linux. You can find more info about it here:http://osflash.org/red5

Until now AVChat 2 and AVConference worked only with Adobe’s Flash Media Server.

To purchase AVChat 2 or AVConference on Red5 email us after the purchase and let us know you want the Red5 version.

If you have already purchased AVChat 2 or AVConference email us and we will send you the proper Red5 files for your licensed domain.

All tutorials and support material on the website will now be updated to include Red5 specific info.