AbelCAm serves your video in 3 formats:

- series of JPEG images (as seen in the JavaScript example page)

- MJPEG image stream (as seen in the Java example page)

- WMV stream (as seen in the Windows Media example page)

Of those 3 formats, only WMV is capable of including audio. That's dictated by the formats themselves, not by AbelCam.

So... if you need sound you'll need to work with WMV. In order to get PTZ and WMV on the same page, what I'd suggest is to create a page that is a hybrid of the Java page (use the PTZ control applet, which is called "abelabs") and the WMV page. There's no reason I can think of that the Media Player and the abelabs PTZ applet can't co-exist on a page. Look over the source code of those two example pages and then start cutting and pasting and experimenting.

Here's the catch. WMV streams are always buffered to some extent by the clients' Media Player. Buffering can't be entirely avoided - it's part of the WMV "standard". I believe the built-in default buffering is 5 seconds for Media Player 9 and above. So what that means is that the image on the player is at least 5 seconds behind real-time. Not a big deal when watching a movie or something, but when you start interacting with the camera (e.g. moving the PTZ) the buffer delay is likely to create confusion, since the results of moving the PTZ won't actually be seen for 5 seconds or more. This may well be the reason Stefan didn't make an example page that combines PTZ and WMV.

2-way sound? I'm not aware of any way to do that with AbelCam. That's more a job for videoconferencing or Skype-like software I think.

Hi MelvinG:

Actually, I'm back. After evaluating several competing packages for features, functionality and stability, I settled on AbelCam and purchased a license. You just can't beat the stability and flexibility and robustness of AbelCam at any price. I just need to get the sound working.

Is there a close example of what you're describing (above) available? I'm no html programmer but, if I have an example, I usually am able to figure it out. For instance, in the Java applet example, there is a descriptor that says "Yourhost:yourip". I know what the ip of the host running AbelCam is, but what is the "yourhost" part; the hostname?

Thanks,

RobertB

Hi Stefan:

Thanks. I'll take a look at them.

Insofar as the other question is concerned, that's what I thought. It didn't make sense to me. However, if you go to...http://www.multicamserver.com/en/abelwiki/JavaApplets; that is what it indicates unless my eyes are giving out on me.

I have a static ip so I shouldn't need to visit the redirector page.

Thanks for all your help.

Robert

thank you, Melvin.

Now I know _some_ people are checking out the Wiki Pages - and Members _can_ edit

Hi Stefan:

O.K., I'm checking this out now and I have a couple of more questions (naturally).

If I want to use your code example above on my own web site that is served by a different web server on the network but not on the same computer that is running AbelCam, can I do it? If so, do I need to copy the abelabs.zip file over to the wwwroot directory on the non-AbelCam webserver computer? Also, are there any other files I should copy over?

Thanks,

Robert