What is the easiest/best way to record mp3 from flash in a browser

Question

I need to record audio clips from web browser using flash and store them as mp3 files on S3. The application is written in Ruby on Rails, but I suppose its not too relevant here.

We already did this once in another project few years ago. At the time we did it by writing a custom extension to Red5 media server + some cron jobs to upload mp3s.

We didn't really like Red5 though so this time I'd like to see if there are easier options.

We don't need streaming, and we don't need video. Just simple audio recording to mp3 format.

Answer 1

I found Wowza on EC2 easier to work with than Red5, but it's not free (speech or beer).

Another option, starting with Flash 10.1, is to capture audio data directly in the client using Microphone.sampleData. We package that into a WAV (Adobe example), but you could go to MP3 (blog with sample) instead.

Upload the file and away you go.