Need advice for live streaming
 

Our local girl scouts are hosting a "Dancing with the stars" event and i have been asked to video it, but they want the event streamed to either tv screens or projectors for guest that are not located to the action to see. i need some advise as to how i can stream and record at the same time. I don't have a video switcher, but i do have a laptop with onlocation on it. I was wondering if i can capture and show at the same time. Thanks for any help.

I'll assume there's only one camera, since you say you don't have a switcher. How are you recording this ? In-camera? Who is supplying the big screens ? Give them your composite output and be done with it.

The other problem is if you are taping this for later editing, then IMAG (Image Magnification, what we call it when a camera shoots action and is seen on big screens).. IMAG is _not_ going to work for them, because you will be panning and moving and doing all sorts of things that .. while edited out, will be seen live on the big screens. This includes getting focus, down time.. people don't want to see that.

Very least you will need two cameras for IMAG, and a switcher (not a hard cut 6 to 1 type thing, but a real production switcher with dissolves. You can still iso record those cameras for your editing, so not all is lost.

But what seems like a simple request at first, is complex enough to screw up what you were there to do in the first place.

If you are using windows, you can use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder, a free download, which will let you connect to your streaming server and archive a copy at the same time. We have done this on our web site, it works fine. I believe, on the Mac side, that Quicktime Broadcaster, also free, does the same. hth / Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team

When streaming (we used the ustream http://www.ustream.tv/ service), I've often recorded to tape in the camera as well as using a firewire feed out of the camera to go in to a laptop which then uploads to the ustream site. It also stops that annoyingly blinking "no tape" icon.

When the laptop started crashing about 30 minutes in for no apparent reason (for firewire input), the laptop inbuilt camera became the source for streaming instead. But I still had the good quality copy being recorded to tape.

More people watch the post-event recording than the live stream, so it was majorly important to have the good recording for afterwards.

BTW, if you are interested, the first recording (where we had the firewire issue) is here at http://www.vimeo.com/4893126 and a later recording of the following meeting is here at http://www.vimeo.com/5516584

Both times we have about 60 or 70 people watching the streaming version. To date, 83 people have watched the recording of the Century Batteries Case Study (recording #1) and 5,623 people have watched the second recording (Joomla 1.6 software preview) which was a major event.

Hope this helps. Do need the extra info that the others were asking about.

Andrew

A service you should look at can be found at IdoStream live wedding webcast, broadcast and video streaming. Share your wedding live online for friends and family who cannot make it to the event.