NOTE PLEASE:

‡  means the actual exact details are in the confidential readme, attached, whose password you should know, which i strongly encourage SRers read instead of this. plus the layout didn't get screwed up.  in particular, what looks like redactions below is merely what happens when you cut and paste graphics.  

‡'s are where the info was.  ok.  








Concernynge The Camera, &c,

or,

Some Obseruations 

Happily Pursuant 

to a 

Greater Securitie

a hopefully platform-independent explanation 

of her work so far

by

a female faust


introduction

because i only did what i knew i could, of all i conceive may be true about this setup, certainly it needeth a readme, by way of explanation. 

therefore, upon well founded advice i hereby attempt to document my work (something i have never done before in this realm) & thus enable & invite help to advance the cause...... 


what about that machine downstairs?

warning : if that cam is not recording i will have to go back in & do some more cobbling, more frankensteinian (/fræŋk-ɛn-ʃt-ēē-nē-ən/) than faustian no doubt.  because it has to work.  a. s. a. p...  

and because it doesn't work if 

and would be better if

 

the way i did the doorcam:

the Picture 3.png is running the smartest OS X (which means that the eminently useful OS 9 has already been broken on it, but can be reinstalled).   (however the Terminal on it should have most if not all of what you would expect from a 'nix box).  

An awesome & awesomely painless tutorial that introduced me to QuickTime Broadcaster, courtesy of murphymac.com, may be found here; consider it a readme on the program.  The version of it that i used came from here; the pro version of QT from here* (it says you don't need QT pro but I think you do); the macam download from here.


more specifically 

the relevant files in the box's Apache Webserver (Library/Webserver/Documents/) that were used to create what was semi up & running are all called "works" -- no filetype for the program-specific settings files; the .sdp & the .mov for the exported files upon which one must click should one want to stream the image.

if you want to change any of the settings you can only do so when it is NOT broadcasting.  audio has been  disabled by default, to save cpu goodness.  

i was doing multicast with auto generated IP addresses -- it generates two, one for video & one for audio anyway -- & assigns port numbers automatically. i don't know how this is supposed to work if the audio is enabled, the two address thing.  

the exported file "works.mov" is easily parsed by QuickTime, on a machine running OS X,  & on one running Vista.  

the exported file "works.sdp" is easily parsed by VLC, on a machines running OS X, & on a machine running i-didn't-ask-but-possibly-linux.

please see the awesome & awesomely painless murphymac tutorial mentioned above, if for no other reason than the awesomeness. well, that & that it tells you almost everything you need to know.


because i wanted it to stream painlessly

i needed the stream to not be overly consumptive of bandwidth: i was looking for a way that it could be served by an intermediary computer.  i am relatively new at this (no! really?) so i am not sure without further study if my solution accomplished this....  it would have to work well first... but here's what i did (with some detail in case any one wants to follow up on one of the other alternatives so they can have what benefit may be had from my work).

youtube

i tried to upload the .mov to youtube but it was not fooled by the Quicktime wrapper. 


blogger version one

ditto blogger.


ustream

i had tried to stream using the camera &  ustream.tv originally, on the account i made just for that purpose, but *'/%@ ustream, probably in an effort to make the user either go pro or upgrade or both, makes it extremely (extremely) difficult.   could not log in -- buttons unclickable or missing, kept redirecting to a sign up page.  i hate it when i am told i cannot do something for no ≈®&/?†&$! reason.  so i logged in with my other, slightly newer power-pc laptop -- whilst sniffing the exchanged packets -- studied the results & cobbled together some urls. 

so if you want to log into ustream, there's a file with a couple urls in it,‡ & there's a folder with some relevant cookies in it‡. i really don't think the cookies are that relevant, but if they are, replace the ones already there with them.‡   

the file is visible.‡ open it & you will find the following two url's‡ -- enter the long one & then the short one into the address bar of Safari (Pasted Graphic 5.tiff.in the dock, or click on the Finder, or on the Desktop background, & go to /Applications/Safari) (sure, install Firefox, but it will be slow!)  the long one will return a whole bunch of plaintext, or it will download it.  ignore that & enter the shorter one anyway. ‡

you are then on the dashboard. et voila.

however, i found had the same problem again when i wanted to broadcast or go-live as the natives call it, & no longer had the patience.  if someone wants me to i can sniff & cobble for that as well -- shouldn't be hard.  whatever that means.  i may do it anyway -- then we wouldn't have to worry about recording -- & wouldn't need an application running on the box  -- or would at the very least, if we ran both, have a backup.


what i ended up doing

was taking the .mov‡ & encoding it in base64, something that i have been known to do & may in fact be quite... fond... ....of.  let's leave it at that for now, hmmm?  in any event by doing so, that is, by borrowing the structure of the old embed code that youtube, which is google, still supports (because untold millions of embeds would break otherwise), & plugging in the data-encoded URI, i was able to get it past Blogger.  the html:‡

<object height="315" width="420"><param name="movie" value="data:video/quicktime;base64,blahblahdataencodedblah"></param>

<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>

<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>

<embed src="data:video/quicktime;base64,blahblahdataencodedblah" type="video/quicktime" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

and the result was live (at least on the boxes i tested, more on that below) at my least visited (and least used) blogspot.‡


if the camera becomes unrecognized 

at first -- way at the beginning, after i set up the Pasted Graphic.tiff -- the camera went unrecognized, since it was not firewire; it became recognized & remained so after i futzed with it.  here's what i did:

after which it FINALLY recognized the camera, & has ever since. 


if a way cannot be found to record the stream

pipe it over the network to the upstairs computer (watch that tutorial & it will be a snap -- there's a setting to broadcast to just one machine) & record it from there.  DO NOT TRUST the "save to disk" feature unless you personally verify that the resultant files may be played.  they are certainly fat enough to be movies, & they look like movies when i opened them as text (something i love to do), but i could not get functioning videoplayback.

if that fails just attach a big enough hard drive externally, quit quicktime broadcaster & either use quicktime (a pro version is installed on the box) or better yet, macam, which leaves a smaller footprint.

waaa.  i wanted streaming!  but last i checked, there was this problem:


the stream cannot be seen from outside

as the kind soul who chatted with me‡ & others are well aware, though when i actually did leave, one SRer‡ was able to get the stream on his machine.  he was, however, inside.  the SRer i chatted with earlier‡ pointed out that only being able to get the stream from inside may be all for the best; i will leave that up to what people think.  i do not, however, consider it a detriment to my privacy.  as a matter of fact, this is one of the rare cases in which i find that i feel the surveillance enhances my security, rather than threatening it.

that said, i have thought quite a bit about why it seems the stream was not available from outside the local network, & have come to the conclusion that the camera needs to be assigned a static domain-style URL, that points to the LAN ip address, even though the broadcast addresses that the program assigns are static.  

there is a place i think in the netherlands that has a free dns updating service for just such eventualities, & gives static addresses like DYNDNS used to give, with a freeware updater.  & i will probably test this theory.


remember

if you change any of the settings, in order to stream you have to go to the menu along the top of the screen while it is broadcasting & hit export.  

please leave me a note if you do, attached to this thread if possible or privately.  i will be ever so happy to do the weird data encoding stuff to get the webpage up & running as well.  (i think that's cool).  & if it all the well no hitch, perhaps then it can graduate & be official on the SR website!


other notables

  


be seeing you.



notes


‡  means the actual exact details are in the confidential readme which i strongly encourage SRers read instead of this. 


*and here: www DOT keygenguru.com SLASH sn SLASH apple_quicktime_7_4_1 DOT html

**and then it isn't over; it just began.......