AVChat Software Product Blog

Below is a screenshot containing all of AVChat‘s admin panels and functions and explanations for each one. Click the screenshot to enlarge it.

Just a few days ago I was alarmed on the forum that many users of AVChat started getting the error in the title out of the blue without the chat webmasters doing anything.

After a quick investigation we had found the culprit.

It seems Adobe has modified something in their latest Flash Player Update (11.1.102.62).

They modified the contents of the pageUrl variable sent by Flash Player when it connects to a media server like FMS, Red5 or Wowza.

In FP 11.1.102.55 (released on November 7th, 2011) pageUrl looked like this: http://avchat.net/demos/avchat30/
In FP 11.1.102.62 (released on February 15th, 2012, the one thats causing the issue) pageUrl is truncated and looks like this: http://avchat.net

Strangely enough this modification/problem exists only in Firefox ( on both PC and MAC).

This shorter pageUrl flips our domain checking mechanism resulting in end users getting the error in the title when trying to connect.

To fix the issue we have compiled some new media server files (Red5, FMIS, Wowza) for the latest build of AVChat, 1418 and attached them to this blog post together with patching instructions.

We will compile such patches for both older versions of AVChat and other software like our HDFVR video recorder .

FLVAR for Red5 and FMIS, SimplChat and AVConference do not need patching.

============== AVChat 3 build 1418 patches below============

To fix the error when using AVChat 1418 and FMIS media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new main.ase file for FMIS
2. Extract the contents of the attached archive, it contains a new main.ase file
3. Replace your old main.ase file in FMS/applications/avchat30/ with the new one in the attached archive
4. Restart the media server OR reload the avchat30 application using the FMS management console/FCS application inspector
5. Done

To fix the error when using AVChat 1418 and Red5 media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new Application.class file for Red5
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new Application.class file
3. Replace your old Application.class file in Red5\webapps\avchat30\WEB-INF\classes\avchat3 with the new one
4. Restart Red5
5. Done

To fix the error when using AVChat 1418 and Wowza media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new avchat3.jar file for Wowza
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new avchat3.jar file
3. Replace your old avchat3.jar file in Wowza\lib with the new one in the attached archive
4. Restart Wowza
5. Done

============== AVChat 3 build 1252 patches below============

To fix the error when using AVChat 1252 and Red5 media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new Application.class file for Red5
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new Application.class file
3. Replace your old Application.class file in Red5\webapps\avchat30\WEB-INF\classes\avchat3 with the new one
4. Restart Red5
5. Done

============== AVChat 3 build  1198 patches below============

To fix the error when using AVChat 1198 and Red5 media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new Application.class file for Red5
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new Application.class file
3. Replace your old Application.class file in Red5\webapps\avchat30\WEB-INF\classes\avchat3 with the new one
4. Restart Red5
5. Done

============== AVChat 3 build  960 patches below============

To fix the error when using AVChat 960 and Red5 media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new Application.class file for Red5
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new Application.class file
3. Replace your old Application.class file in Red5\webapps\avchat30\WEB-INF\classes\avchat3 with the new one
4. Restart Red5
5. Done

============== HDFVR patches below============

To fix the error when using HDFVR (any build) and FMIS media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new main.ase file for FMIS
2. Extract the contents of the attached archive, it contains a new main.ase file
3. Replace your old main.ase file in FMS/applications/hdfvr/ with the new one in the attached archive
4. Restart the media server OR reload the hdfvr application using the FMS management console/FCS application inspector
5. Done

To fix the error when using HDFVR (any build) and Red5 media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new Application.class file for Red5
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new Application.class file
3. Replace your old Application.class file in Red5\webapps\hdfvr\WEB-INF\classes\VideoRecorder with the new one
4. Restart Red5
5. Done

To fix the error when using HDFVR (any build) and Wowza media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new hdfvr.jar file for Wowza
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new hdfvr.jar file
3. Replace your old hdfvr.jar file in Wowza\lib with the new one in the attached archive
4. Restart Wowza
5. Done

============== FLVAR patches below============

To fix the error when using FLVAR (any build) and Wowza media server:

1. Download this archive: zip archive containing new audiorecorder.jar file for Wowza
2. Unpack the attached archive, it contains a new audiorecorder.jar file
3. Replace your old audiorecorder.jar file in Wowza\lib with the new one in the attached archive
4. Restart Wowza
5. Done

Update 9th of March 2012:

Adobe just released Flash Player 11.1.102.63 for PC and 11.1.102.64 for Mac on March 4.

This update does not fix the initial issue that caused the “Connection rejected error” introduced in Flash Player 11.1.102.62.

The patches do not need to be installed anymore if your website members upgarde to the latest version of Flash Player.

With the new Social Engine 4 demand that keeps on growing, recently I decided to write on my blog an article about how to build a premium social community with SE4 and the AVChat Products integrated with SE4: (AVChat 3, HDFVR and Zuzubooth)

If you are interested in, just follow this link and read the full article:

http://mihaifrentiu.com/how-to-build-a-premium-social-community-with-social-engine-4-avchat-3-hdfvr-and-zuzubooth

You want to find out what version of Red5 is running on your server?

There are a few ways:

1) Look at the Red5 welcome page on port 5080.

To see the welcome page just go to http://yourred5server.com:5080 in your web browser. It’s not the most accurate but it’s the fastest and you don’t need access to the Red5 installation. Here are the welcome screens for different versions.

Red5 0.8 welcome page:

Red5 0.9.1 welcome page:

Red5 1.0 RC1 welcome page:

2) Look in docs/changelog.txt

Look in the Red5 installation folder/docs/changelog.txt . You will immediately see the Red5 version there:

3) Pay attention to the Red5 startup log

During startup, Red5 will show the Red5 version, here is where to look when starting Red5 standalone on Windows:

4) Look in log/red5_service.log

When starting Red5 as a service on Windows it will create a new log file: Red5 installation folder/log/red5_service.log . In it you will find the Red5 startup log mentioned above and thus the Red5 version.

You know any other way? Post the method in the comments section below.

Starting with build 900, AVChat 3 introduces a new security feature called “token based authentication”. When enabled this prevents 3′rd party swf files (hosted on other web sites than your own or by malicious users) to connect to your media server. There are other security measures in place to prevent this however token based authentication is the most secure!

This feature is turned off by default because with it enabled:

• it takes slightly more time for users to connect to the media server,
• it might cause some connection attempts to the media server over slow Internet connections to fail
• we’ve only had a few clients that really needed this feature!

How o turn it on:

• install AVChat
• edit the settings file on the media server  (avchat3.properties on Red5 and Wowza, settings.asc on FMIS)
• set the value of the tokenUrlLocation variable to the absolute url to token_verify.php  (token_verify.php is in the folder where you installed AVChat on your website, good example: http://avchat.net/demos/av30/token_verify.php)
• restart the media server

There are two ways to open the AVChat Video Chat Component in a pop up in Joomla!:

1. Using Joomla!’s default method:
   • Log in the administrator area of Joomla!.
   • In the Menus area edit the link to AVChat 3.
   • Set the On Click, Open in option to  New Window without Browser Navigation (screenshot below)
   • Click Save.

   

   That’s it! Clicking the link in the menu will now open the video chat in a pop up. Using this method however you will not have control over the pop up dimensions

2. A way that allows you to control the size of the pop up:
   • For this you’ll need to login to your website with an FTP client (FileZilla is our favourite) and go to /components/com_avchat3/
   • Open avchat3.php for editing.
   • Replace the object & embed html tags (everything from <object… to </object>) with this html code:
     <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="window.open('/components/com_avchat3/index.swf', 'AVChat', 'menubar=0, resizable =0, width=900, height=650');">Launch AVChat Video Chat</a>

   • Save the file and make sure you upload it back to the web server.

   You can change the size of the pop up by editing the width and height properties in the code above.

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!

When AVChat 3 is opened in a pop up window you can use the [Leave Chat] button to close the pop up window:

1. edit avc_settings.php or avc_settings.asp
2. set $avconfig['disconnectButtonEnabled']=1;
3. set $avconfig['disconnectButtonLink'] = ‘javascript:window.close();‘;

By default clicking [Leave Chat] takes you to a new web page instead of closing the window!

On the publisher side:

Problem: low frame rate

Solution(s):

1. Increase the light in the room, natural light works best.
2. Get a better web cam, good web cams capture a lot of frames with little light in the room.
3. Lower the picture resolution requested by AVChat 3, some web cams just can’t capture 30fps at 400×300.
4. Increase the movement in the shot, if there’s no movement Flash Player will not capture many frames/second because there’s no movement.

Problem: video stream does not use entire allocated bandwidth

Solution(s):

1. Increase the light in the room, natural light works best. More light helps the web cam capture more details!
2. Get a better web cam, good web cams capture a lot of detail with little light in the room. DV cams for example capture huge ammounts of data compared to normal web cams.
3. Check your connection to the media server. When you’re publishing video you’re  uploading data to the media server. Even tough you might have a 20Mbits/s Internet connection, that’s most probably your download rate, your actual upload rate could be much less. If you’ve configured the video chat to use as much as 768kbits/s per stream, this ammount of video data will not fit in real time trough your 350kbits/s upload pipe!

Problem: dark image or noisy image

Solution(s):

1. Increase the light in the room, natural light works best.
2. Get a better webcam.

Problem: no image at all or blank image

Solution(s):

1. Make sure your web cam is not already used by another app
2. Make sure the proper web cam is used by Flash Player (Right click -> Settings -> Web Cam tab -> Select the web cam you want to use from the drop down list)

Overview

In order to show on your website who is logged in the video chat, AVChat 3 generates 2 external files in the folder where it is installed:

• users__definst_.txt -> a text file containing the number of unique users connected to the video chat
• users__definst_.xml -> an xml file containing the list of rooms and users in each room

You will see these files ONLY AFTER THE FIRST USER (NOT ADMIN) LOGS IN THE VIDEO CHAT!

You can use these 2 files to show on your website how many clients are logged in, the room structure or which clients are logged in!

How to actually code/do that is outside the scope of this article but anyone with minumum php or .net experience  should be able to parse the xml/text file and post the contents on the website.

How it works

In detail:

1. user joins the video chat via index.swf, the path to the writeuserslist.php is automatically detected
2. user joins a room, the media server sends the new  rooms/users structure to writeuserslist.php via POST (using the path detected at step 1)
3. writeuserslist.php receives the new info via POST and creates the 2 files on the web server

The media server automatically detects the path to writeuserslist.php WHEN THE FIRST USER (NOT ADMIN) LOGS IN THE VIDEO CHAT.

One some of our integration kits admin.swf and writeuserslist.php are placed in separate folders, that’s why admins logging in do not trigger an attempt to detect the path to writeuserslist.php!

Admins and users are properly listed in the external .xml file as long as at least a user has logged in in the past so that the media server knows where writeuserslist.php is located!

You can also set the path manually (via the settings.asc/avchat3.properties files on the media server) and you should when:

• you’re using writeuserslist.asp (or any other scripting language) instead of writeuserslist.php
• you’ve moved writeuserslist.php to a separate folder
• you have troubles with the external users list not being generated

Troubleshooting

If the 2 files refuse to appear do these tasks in this order:

1. Log in the video chat trough the user interface (not the admin interface/area)
2. Make sure the folder containing writeuserslist.php is chmoded to 777 so that writeuserslist.php can write/crate new files
3. Make sure calls to the new info is POST-ed from the media server to the web server (check Apache logs)
4. Make sure the folder where writeuserslist.php is located is not password protected!
5. Hard code the path to writeuserslist.php  in settings.asc ( on FMIS ) or in avchat3.properties ( on Wowza/Red5 ) and restart the media server
6. contact support: http://avchat.net/support/request-support/

Turning the feature off

On FMIS  edit applications/avchat30/settings asc, set application.writeUsersLists=false and restart FMIS!

On Red5 edit webapps/avchat30/avchat3.properties, set writeUsersLists=false and restart Red5!

On Wowza edit conf/avchat30/avchat3.properties, set writeUsersLists=false and restart Wowza!

This will turn off the feature and stop the media server from making POST calls to the web server!