OVERVIEW

@ctiVideoWeb is an OCX control for video capture, compression and upload. This OCX control is designed to run within a webpage and allow the websites to connect to the visitor camera or TV board, grab single frames or live video, compress them to JPEG/WMF/AVI formats and upload them, using HTTP POST method or stream them across the network, using mms://. From the webserver's perspective, the @ctiVideoWeb control behaves exactly like a normal HTML form, containing <INPUT type="file> tag. The only difference is, that instead of uploading a file from the visitor's harddrive, the control uploads a video frame or full-motion video clip.

Look at the following two examples:

Code:	What it looks like:
<FORM name="actiVideoWeb" method="POST" action="uploadvideo.asp"> <INPUT type="file" name="ActivideoControl"> <INPUT type="text" name="SessionID"> <INPUT type="submit" value="Submit"> </FORM>

and

Code:

What it looks like:

<object id="actiVideoWeb" classid="clsid:8D10E13A-BC9F-4214-9CC4-89459DA65932" CODEBASE="@ctiVideoWeb30.CAB#version= 3,0,0,221" width="227" height="190"> <param name="BorderStyle" value="1"> <param name="ToolbarBorder" value="0"> <param name="BackColor" value="0"> <param name="CaptureAudio" value="-1"> <param name="CaptureControls" value="0"> <param name="UploadURL" value="http://www.abcd.com/uploadvideo.asp"> <param name="UploadBaseName" value="105914"> <param name="VideoFormat" value="0"> </object>

Well, those two pieces of code are equivalent! Hitting the "Send!" button on the @ctiVideoWeb control in the second case makes it act EXACTLY the way you would expect the form to act when you click the "Submit" button in the first case. Easy, isn't it?

The overall design perspective:

The fact, that @ctiVideoWeb uses standard HTTP protocol for sending the video and the images back to the webserver means, that the control will work in ANY environment - if the users can connect to your web-site, they'll be able to send their video. Firewall? Proxy? Connection sharing? No problem! The control uses the same mechanism for transfering the files as any ordinary form on your webpage. No need to ensure open ports, firewall access, anything! What's even more amazing: the control will automatically use the proxy settings of the customer browser. All this ensures smooth communication and happy customers.

On the other hand, you don't need a specially trained web-developers, to add video functionality to your existing web-site. Any programmer, who knows how to deal with a simple form submits will be able to incorporate audio and video, using the @ctiVideoWeb control.

The client-side GUI web-designer's prespective:

Using the @ctiVideoWeb control is as easy as using any other ActiveX component within webpage. All you need to do is embed the corresponding <OBJECT> tag, using the proper classid string. The control comes with a set of default properties, which will help you get started on the spot. Once you feel comfortable with the application framework, you can start changing and tweaking the rich set of properties - you can adjust anything from the appearance of the control to the parameters of the encoded video and the navigation URLs.

The server-side web-programmer's perspective:

Using the @ctiVideoWeb control is as easy as processing a FORM-submit. Period. In fact, if you are a server-side programmer and you have to write your code to handle the sample code shown at the top of this page, you can't really distinguish between the two code snippets. So, if you know how to handle <INPUT type="file"> form submission requests, you know how to handle the video, uploaded by the @ctiVideoWeb control.