Recording Audio via the Web for an Intranet Solution

Question

What is the best (cheapest, most open) way to record audio via a web page. Then keep that recording as MP3 format and make it available via a unique ID / URL.

I guess Flash-based plug-in would be best. I'm thinking of something that works like Odeo, but this would be for Intranet-only usage. I can't rely and public URLs or Services.

I'm looking for something I can cobble together from existing components (Open Source) projects.

Malayopolynesian

So I was able to find Red5. Got that installed on a spare server. Fixed the missing red5.properties file. But now when I login using admin/admin I get a 404 error back from Jetty - RequestURI=/admin/register.html – Malayopolynesian

Answer 1

You need a service server side to record audio, this could be hosted on one of you network's machines (unless you are doing it via AIR locally for each computer).

FMS by Adobe provides the option for recording and playing streams.

But first thing, you should have a look on Red5, which is an alternative free service :

http://www.red5.org/

There are samples on their website and you can find some on google as well. here is one :

http://fms.denniehoopingarner.com/

Here's a quick tutorial about recording locally with AIR:

http://seeing-is-believing.blogspot.com/2008/05/capture-and-write-audio-stream-with.html

Nissy

+1 Theo, any thoughts on my comments attached to the question itself? Not sure how to successfully login. – Malayopolynesian

How difficult is the AIR recording locally thing? – Malayopolynesian

hi there, regarding AIR it seems quite straight-forward. I attached an example to my answer(to make it visible). For your issue I don't have Red5 installed here right now. – Nissy

Answer 2

Here's a tutorial on using the microphone in Flash:

http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/microphone.htm

Documentation the Flash Microphone object:

http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/action_scripts/actionscript_dictionary/actionscript_dictionary479.html

Hypochondriac

Answer 3

So bad how Adobe screwed things up with DIrector. I use to do that in a snap (recording audi a full 44 000 wav/16 bits TROUGHT a web page, using Director SHockwave, and the apropriate xtra (an additional 100$ plug in)...too bad things went so difficult with as3...(but yes, ok, more clean and efficient)

Contrabandist

Can you give me some more info? Not familiar with this aspect of Director or the Shockwave plugin. What went so difficult with as3? +1 – Malayopolynesian

Answer 4

I've been looking too and the most promising I've found so far is Red5 plus the hints from http://fms.denniehoopingarner.com/ ... how much have these tools moved on since the question was asked here back in 2009? There are also browser audio APIs on their way, but it seems Flash (and/or Java?) are needed for mainstream users.

Tannin

Answer 5

You can't record audio using a web page, but if for some reason you need to embed a sound recording destop app (as you've said, using a plug-in of some kind) then a Java applet is probably the best/easiest way. A custom plugin/extension would be better, but harder, unless there is one already (there may be).

You should probably also reconsider using a web page for this. You haven't really given you requirements, so I can't say, but it may be much better to use a network application other than your web browser :)

Itemized

I did find the Red5 project and here is a showcase of where it is used - osflash.org/red5/showcase - Installed it on a spare Win2K box I had and it had errors all over the place. Trying to solve it now ... so I can at least see the examples. – Malayopolynesian

Answer 6

The alternative to recording in-browser is asking the user to upload a file they've recorded from another application. There are all sorts of usability problems there, but it may be the most straightforward way to get this done in 2009.

I recently spoke to a Flash developer friend about this to see if there's some solution using only Flash and the standard web server toolkit with no dependency on Red5 or FMS, and he suggested that it may actually be possible with Flash 10. This gave me an idea which I have fleshed out a little more here. Would anyone like to help out and make this happen, or is this impossible?

Chink