Javascript library for recording user audio?

Question

This isn't another one of those "How can I record audio in the browser?" questions... I know that the HTML5 Stream API is around the corner and Flash can already access the user's microphone and camera. I'm simply wondering, as a Javascript developer with little knowledge of Flash, if anyone has developed a JS library that hooks into Flash's device capabilities for recording but sends the results back to javascript (presumably using ExternalInterface).

In other words... libraries like SoundManager2 utilize a Flash fallback for audio playback, but they don't seem to allow for recording. Has anyone written a JS library that uses an invisible Flash movie to allow audio recording?

Answer 1

This does most of what you're looking for:

https://code.google.com/p/wami-recorder/

It records audio and sends it to a server via an HTTP POST (avoiding the need for a Flash Media Server.) A JavaScript API is available via ExternalInterface.

I'm not sure why you'd want the audio bytes in JavaScript, but it would probably be easy to modify it to do that too.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, you can't really do Flash audio recording in browser only. The Flash audio interfaces are all designed (surprise surprise) to talk to a Flash media server (or Red5): there is no interface to store recorded audio data locally and pass the recorded audio data to Javascript.

Once you have Red5/FMS setup you can control the recording process from Javascript: you can start/stop/playback the audio stream to/from the server. However, for security reasons you have to have a flash movie that is a minimum of 216 x 138 (see http://blog.natebeck.net/2009/01/tip-of-the-day-tricks-of-the-mic-settings-panel/ for a writeup) otherwise the settings manager won't be shown: this prevents people hiding an audio recording flash widget on a page and eavesdropping.

So no, no invisible flash controlled from javascript.