[Under consideration] Add Camera support in to Flash plug-in

[tomchiverton]

Brainstorm link http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/add_camera_support_to_flash_plug-in (http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/add_camera_support_to_flash_plug-in)

This is my first one :-)

[chemist]

I was wondering what you gonna brainstorm on this? how to force adobe and nokia to implement or reopen the bug again?

This forum is not for general discussion.

[tomchiverton]

I was told on the bug to raise a brainstorm.

I think that's odd, because it's more a case of just getting Nokia to turn the feature back on, but <shrug> just trying to do the right process.

[benny1967]

It just shows how Brainstorm's currently being abused.

This is not the only issue when a really well-defined enhancement request was "MOVED" from bugzilla to brainstorm... The problem is that - especially in this case - I don't see much to brainstorm about. It's a matter of re-enabling the function that's already there and was disabled on purpose. There's no other solution to it. You cannot re-compile the Adobe Flash plugin and offer a community maintained version from Extras. It's also not an option to completely replace the proprietary plugin with free alternatives - the alternatives are there, but they're still not on par with Adobe's code.

So what use is the brainstorm in this case? What is the community expected to do about it other than say: "Yes, we want this re-enabled?"

Thank you, anyway, for opening the brainstorm and playing by the rules. Voting for both the bug and the brainstorm is probably the only thing we can do at the moment. I did both.

[chemist]

I talked to Quim, it is to show how desperately wanted this feature is!
Please link to the bugreport as well.
You may call for votes in threads mentioning the lack of this feature to get Adobe's and Nokia's attention for it. (dont spam please, keep it to related topics)

[qgil]

Alright, maybe it was a mistake to resolve that request as MOVED Brainstorm. Let me ask tomorrow about the status of this feature and depending on the situation we can discuss here what to do.

Question from someone not into the topic itself: are there other OMAP3 devices sporting this feature?

[pepitoe]

Im not aware of any but I can't think of many OMAP3 devices that have full Flash so far. Once the Flash 10.1 beta starts being released on mobile devices we will be able to see if others support it.

[qgil]

So this is as I suspected. Code exists but according to our testing it's not up to the quality required. Enabling the feature would probably get users unhappy about video quality etc. Productizing this for the N900 would require extra resources and we prefer to put them in other areas that we believe have a higher priority. This is why it's not currently in the Fremantle plans.

If Maemo 5 has full Flash support already and you are not aware of many other OMAP3 devices with something similar, this tells you something about the amount of work Nokia has put already in order to help Adobe productizing their software.

Security concerns are not the reason, please edit the Brainstorm proposal if you want to focus the discussion on the right topic.

And now about brainstorming:

What are the features you want that make you ask for Flash camera support? Can these features be achieved using alternative technologies?

You may also consider explaining your needs to Adobe and/or any other partner shipping their software on OMAP3 hardware. At the end this is software that Nokia is licensing.

[dryeti]

What are the features you want that make you ask for Flash camera support?


Most live streaming services (like ustream.tv) use web/flash-based applications for live video streaming.

[weirdbeard]

so we can all do things like this

http://tinychat.com/n900frontcameratest

and actually be able to enable our front camera.

[benny1967]

And now about brainstorming:

What are the features you want that make you ask for Flash camera support? Can these features be achieved using alternative technologies?

The only feature I want is being able to use webservices that use flash based videochat.

[go1dfish]

So this is as I suspected. Code exists but according to our testing it's not up to the quality required. Enabling the feature would probably get users unhappy about video quality etc. Productizing this for the N900 would require extra resources and we prefer to put them in other areas that we believe have a higher priority. This is why it's not currently in the Fremantle plans.

If Maemo 5 has full Flash support already and you are not aware of many other OMAP3 devices with something similar, this tells you something about the amount of work Nokia has put already in order to help Adobe productizing their software.

Security concerns are not the reason, please edit the Brainstorm proposal if you want to focus the discussion on the right topic.

And now about brainstorming:

What are the features you want that make you ask for Flash camera support? Can these features be achieved using alternative technologies?

You may also consider explaining your needs to Adobe and/or any other partner shipping their software on OMAP3 hardware. At the end this is software that Nokia is licensing.

It's primarily useful for services such as ustream.tv and others that allow broadcasting via flash. Their may be some videoconferencing utils that use this as well?

When you say code exists for this feature but doesn't pass testing, are you referring to a patch to the current 9.4 flash plugin?

Or will this feature also be unavailable on the upcoming flash 10.1 release?

It would be nice to have webcam support in flash, but not if it will in any way delay the release of a GPU/DSP accelerated Flash plugin (10.1) for Maemo.

[qgil]

Using the front camera or not shouldn't be mixed with using Flash video or not since they are actually different problems.

Also the fact that some services use Flash video in some of their applications doesn't necessarily mean always that you need Flash video and only that to broadcast video in such services. For instance Qik for Maemo (http://maemo.nokia.com/maemo-select/applications/qik/) works.

Maybe it's worth investigating further about possibilities to use ustream.tv and other web services without Flash video?

You should ask Adobe for details about the Flash video availability/quality in their upcoming releases for Linux OMAP3.

[zwer]

Front camera in support within Flash can have other appliances than just videoconferencing via RTMP. You can do head-tracking navigation, RT OCR (it would be helpful to access the full back camera for that purpose, tho), augmented reality appliances etc. Just as an example, I wrote a simple library that gives ability for sites to implement dynamic 1D/2D barcode scan and automatically open the target product page. As I know, it's being used by one IT retailer here so users don't need to enter their product serials to get to the exact product support page - all users need to do is to wave their product in front of their webcam.

Yes, it's kind of a gimmicky feature, but being able to do that from within the browser on a handheld can have quite handy usage for large retailers (shopping malls for example) where you can connect on their site and get all the additional info you need on some product just by scanning the barcode of product you are interested in, without the need to develop a separate application for each use case.

[Thiis]

This may be worth another kick.
Cuz I dont realy get it. The software is roughly ready, but nokia doesnt want it to get out? I would love to see this feature in the near future. Or Qik must come up with more plugins for like ustream or blogtv.