Will TideKit be able to stream live video & audio from Android & IOS cameras & mics to a server?

Question

I need to know if TideKit will be able to stream live video and audio from device cameras and microphones. The Android and IOS APIs allow for this. I think Flex can do it. I asked about this on the Twitter page but I'm looking for a more definitive answer. The one I got was "TideKit is a development, not a streaming platform but you could develop an app for that! That’s where TideKit comes into play" which doesn't fully answer the question.

The goal is to stream video from Android & IOS cameras and audio from the device microphones to a media streaming server such as Flash Media Server or a Wowza streaming server using either RTMP or HTTP streaming from the app to the server. That or it would work if the stream were sent live in any other way to a server socket and then encoded for redistribution via a streaming server.

They key here though is "live" rather than having to waiting for a video or audio file to become complete before sending it off to the server. I know it's possible with the APIs and I really hope TideKit will be able to do this because no other platform similar to TideKit (and there are MANY) can do this besides Flex. I've poured through countless SDK documents. If TideKit can do this it will attract a lot more customers.

Eagerly awaiting a response,

Thanks

Answer 1

@xendi Thank you for your question. TideKit is an app development platform. You can use it for any type of app development for mobile, desktop and web. We've purposefully kept the core of TideKit small. This is to ensure its core is extremely stable and that most functionality can can come through modules.

Out of the box, TideKit has core AV functionality on all platforms. Extension of this functionality is through TideKit modules that have operating system implementations or from pure JavaScript modules. There are almost 100,000 modules of pure JavaScript functionality now available to you through existing repositories including NPM, Bower and Component that can simply be consumed in CommonJS.

When a TideKit or JavaScript module is installed it offers its APIs. This extends the APIs with those already available. Either way those APIs become available to you in JavaScript.

You already have access to camera with TideKit. The rest is handling the streaming protocol, ie RTSP, RTMP, HTTP etc. So there are a few ways to accomplish what you want with TideKit.

1. Using a TideKit module that supports the streaming protocols by interacting with its APIs in JavaScript.

2. Using a pure JavaScript solution from a repository together with TideKit that supports the protocols.

3. Writing your own TideKit module that ties together with APIs of the operating systems.

4. Writing the solution in pure javascript using TideKit's camera and network APIs.

TideKit is new and has not yet formally launched. We are currently in a reservations mode. We will be delivering it first to those with reservations and it will be gradually rolled out. Demos are currently being prepared to demonstrate the speed and low barrier to development. When TideKit formally launches, I would check for the availability of modules at that point (for both TideKit and JavaScript implementations). Note that not all possible functionality in TideKit modules will be available with the launch. New modules will be releasing over time.

As an aside, TideKit also supports WebRTC in HTML5 so this could work together with TideKit's other capabilities for interesting possibilities.