Q:

Streaming live desktop video to a web application

I'm looking to find a way to stream a user's desktop LIVE (through some piece of software, such as Open Broadcaster Software) to a web application.
I'm assuming I should use a CDN to get the live streamed video to my web application, but how (and what software should I use) to get the user's desktop to a streaming service? Should I use a service such as Red5 or an AWS service? Or if only a few viewers are using it, should I host the service myself?
Although I have built my share of web applications, I have never dealt with live media streaming before, and I would appreciate any assistance anyone could lend.

A:

By far the best resource for video on Rails is OpenTok
Our own demo here: http://bvc-video.herokuapp.com/broadcasts/1
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Streaming
Video streaming is a tough one
The problem is really dependent on what you're trying to stream. If it's "live" video - I.E captured & sent directly to the viewers, you'll have to use some sort of server to process the video.
Although I don't have huge experience with this, the main issue we've found is the compression / distribution of the feed. It's actually very simple to acheive video streaming on iOS - all the software / hardware is the same (just use the same API / drivers)
This often negates the requirement for a central server, although it's highly recommended (almost required) for many cases. Problems arise when you try and beam to multiple clients on multiple systems; as you'll run into compatibility issues
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Solutions
The solutions we've found are thus:

The most stable part of the app is to take the stream & send to a server
The wizardry will then be to beam that stream to multiple clients
The way to do this is typically to use a flash widget & pull the stream from the server

WebRTC is becoming the standard (OpenTok is built on this)
I'm not sure about video compression / distribution. Akami is an industry heavyweight, but I've never used it. Brightcove too

