Ask an FMS Guru #18: How could you create a time delay on a live stream?

This is a tough one, I've not tried what I'm about to suggest, but I think it would work. If I get some time, I'll give it a shot though.

The question: How could you create a time delay (say 5 minutes) on a live stream so that an administrator/editor could stop a broadcast if an event needed censoring?

The answer:

You can't really, not with a live stream. If you wanted to create a slight delay you could just set a really high buffer so that the stream wouldn't start right away for the end user. But other than that it would be a matter of recording the stream as you are publishing it live and then playing that recorded stream.

This would be a bit tough because what if the stream was only at 3 minutes? How would you know how long the stream is? If the stream hasn't finished recording, I don't think you can actually get a duration on it, meaning that you couldn't seek to a point 5 minutes before the end of it to start playing. This being that the end isn't really the end, it's the live point of the stream.

I've never tried, but that's what I would do I think. Just publish from the client, play it server side and record and then try to play the recording stream. I'm pretty sure you can play an FLV as it's being recorded.

Posted by Graeme at February 14, 2007 04:03 PM