A friend wants to do a live video webcast of an event they're planning. They have a list of about 100,000 subscribers, but really hard to know how many simultaneous connections they'd need. So how does one do this? Use a third party service? Can quicktime streaming server be used? Any advice on where to start is appreciated.

I'm interested too, especially cost. What is involved in DIY hosting? Is it practical?

I use a Tricaster Pro and send the signal to http://www.audiovideoweb.com to handle the traffic. Easy to use, cheap and they only charge for the bandwidth that you use depending on the package you sign up for.

I'm interested too, especially cost. What is involved in DIY hosting? Is it practical?
You can't do it unless you know for sure only one or two people will be watching. Your "up" bandwidth will have to be the sum of their "down" bandwidth.

You must use a professional media streaming server - upload say at 300 kbps, the server takes that and supplies the needed bandwidth to handle all the down streams.

I just finished up a 7 month contract providing live video webcasts for the state. If you only are going to have a couple people watching, you can use something like Wirecast which has a built in server....and if you are on a real fast connection you may be able to serve up 5 people or so. If you are going to have hundreds watching, you need to contract out the serving portion of it......I used Multicast and they are awesome! It does cost though, so it's not something you do unless you are getting paid to do it, I just wrote the costs of the live streaming server space and associated set up into my contract. You need to have some general idea of how many people will be watching to choose the appropriate 'plan' from the live streaming server company......you need to know how much 'space' to buy.....you don't want to buy way more than you need and spend way more than you need to, but you don't want to run our of space either.

I used Multicast and they are awesome!

Gabe, do you have an url for this provider?

Gabe, do you have an url for this provider?

Ask and you shall receive....
www.multicastmedia.com
Great guys to work with. They are affiliated with Akamai which also speaks highly of them.

Hey Gabe, I couldn't find any pricing information on their site. Do you have any info or pricing stucture you could share?

Ah yes...pricing. They have different pricing depending on what you want of course. I can tell you what I got. I got 40 gigs of transfer per month (I was only webcasting one meeting a month.....each meeting was 4 hours so I figured that was enough) I signed a 6 month contract with a $250 set up fee and paid $150 a month after that. My 40 gigs per month was the smallest (and therefore cheapest) option that they had as I remember. Really quite reasonable in my opinion, especially considering if you are doing live webcasts on this scale you are hopefully a business that is being paid for doing this..... I actually did everything myself, all the getting contracts lined up, getting internet at locations, supplied all the gear, set up the audio and video gear, and ran the camera and switched the livecast from the laptop. It was a lot of work for one person, just barely doable if you hustle.

i discovered this but cant use it cause my mac is in the shop and pc dosent have a firewire port (or i am 2 lazy) www.justin.tv can someone tell me if it works

Leo LaPorte hosts a nationally syndicated Tech Guy radio show and does a live stream on the web each Saturday and Sunday. He uses U-Stream (http://ustream.com/) to stream the video and audio. It's a free service, and, by all accounts, seems to work well.

Ask and you shall receive....
www.multicastmedia.com
Great guys to work with. They are affiliated with Akamai which also speaks highly of them.

Thanks for the Multicast tip, Gabe. We just signed up for them for a year. Going to be doing live webcasts as part of our coverage of the US Professional Rally series.

www.drivingsports.com

Seems we both have Mike S. as our rep over there. :)

Cheers,

Ryan

Wirecast doesn't work with Akamai. I worked with their engineers, through Multicast, to try to get it to function in the 11th hour with no luck. Ended up having to run live with Apple's Quicktime Broadcaster, which only allows for one camera and 0 effects. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

Additionally, even in DV mode, Wirecast required me to buy a HD license... which ended up not working. I spoke to their tech and the response was "oh well." The downside for that is then I have to run my A1Us in HD mode for any picture. But that mode doesn't support more than one input per HD bus. Fact is, if my camera is downsampling to DV, I shouldn't have needed an HD license, and it should have supported something as common as an A1U. The developer went back and forth a couple times with me but was ultimately unhelpful.

Looking at going with an external switch now, since Akamai support is more important to me than using any one specific piece of software.

I'm a total neophyte at video streaming. I have a company that does video streaming that is offering to provide us the service for free, but I'm ignorant about the encoding process. I have a Sony EX3 that has firewire out which I can send to a PC, but what is the solution then? Do I use Windows Media Encoder? Has anyone had experience with it? What are the best encoding rates to use? Is anyone streaming HDTV?

You need an application on your computer that knows how to "talk" to the servers used by the streaming service. The service's support or website should tell you what u need to know. That application should give you appropriate encoding choices and the ability to select the video capture device. For example, the QuickTime server uses an application called QuickTime broadcaster to do all this.

Windows Media 9 Encoder is dying a well-deserved death, having been replaced by MS' Expression Encoder. With the latest release of Expression Encoder 4, there is now a freeware version (http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc507507.aspx).

However, WMV webcasting is mostly a special case these days, still in internal use in large enterprises that are tied to the MS platform and don't allow Flash. Don't get me wrong, WMV is a robust and superior webcast platform, but, the current de facto standard is Flash Video.

Adobe also has a freeware encoder for live Flash video, the Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/).

Best encoding rates and HDTV? You makes your best guess, you rolls your dice, you accept the results. How well do you know who your audience is? Their reliable download and your reliable upload bitrate determine what you can do. For a general audience, I figure the minimum broadband connection is 800Kbps down, allow a generous margin because a live stream is not like other internet content, that leaves a max of 500Kbps. Can you do SD, higher def, or HD in 500K? It really depends on how your content is shot and how much motion is in the content.

Wirecast doesn't work with Akamai...
I'm using Akamai as a CDN for live Wirecast frequently, it works just fine for me in WC 3.5 and 4. First backup in case of trouble is to create a broadcast settings file in FMLE, then open the resulting xml settings in Wirecast. 2nd backup would be to go to FMLE for the webcast. But, I sure like Wirecast!

...Additionally, even in DV mode, Wirecast required me to buy a HD license... which ended up not working. I spoke to their tech and the response was "oh well." The downside for that is then I have to run my A1Us in HD mode for any picture. But that mode doesn't support more than one input per HD bus. Fact is, if my camera is downsampling to DV, I shouldn't have needed an HD license, and it should have supported something as common as an A1U. The developer went back and forth a couple times with me but was ultimately unhelpful.

Looking at going with an external switch now, since Akamai support is more important to me than using any one specific piece of software.
That's not like my experience. I did quite a bit with DV before buying the HDV license.

Nothing wrong with an external video switcher, though. Unless you have multiple firewire cards, you're not going to get more than one, sometimes two, firewire sources to play nice. But, problems here are usually come from the operating system, not the webcasting application.

For an externally switched show, I highly recommend the freeware encoder for live Flash video, the Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/flashmediaencoder/). It works fine, and if you have trouble, Akamai can supply a settings file for it.

I did a test today with Expression Encoder 4 running on a notebook with Windows 7 where I took the Sony PMW-EX3 firewire output to the computer but when I attempted to view the source, I got a "Device in Use" error. I understand from Microsoft's web site that this is a general failure error. Strangely, I can see the EX3 in the devices folder and EE4 shows the EX3 as a source.

On another notebook, running Windows XP, I ran Adobe's OnLocation and it had no trouble recognizing the EX3 signal. For a test, I downloaded and ran Flash Media Encoder on the same XP notebook, but it wouldn't recognize the EX3 at all.

Does anyone know if Expression Encoder 4 will accept the EX3 input or will the Pro version work? How about the Flash Media Encoder? Is there any way I can get the EX3 work with it?

I appreciate any help you can provide.

I'd love to test out the EX3, but haven't.

If it has an SD DV firewire output mode, that would be the first thing to get working with EE4.

After that, any HDV modes.

What sometimes happens is that Windows will assign a driver to a particular video device that isn't optimal for the application. This can be difficult to track down. DV drivers are much more standardized than any of the HD drivers.

Also, make sure that your EX3 is the only firewire device - cameras run a different protocol than than hard drives over firewire, and don't like to share with drives or other cams.

I did a test today with Expression Encoder 4 running on a notebook with Windows 7 where I took the Sony PMW-EX3 firewire output to the computer but when I attempted to view the source, I got a "Device in Use" error. I understand from Microsoft's web site that this is a general failure error. Strangely, I can see the EX3 in the devices folder and EE4 shows the EX3 as a source.

On another notebook, running Windows XP, I ran Adobe's OnLocation and it had no trouble recognizing the EX3 signal. For a test, I downloaded and ran Flash Media Encoder on the same XP notebook, but it wouldn't recognize the EX3 at all.

Does anyone know if Expression Encoder 4 will accept the EX3 input or will the Pro version work? How about the Flash Media Encoder? Is there any way I can get the EX3 work with it?

I appreciate any help you can provide.

Did you have the EX3 in 1080x1440 video mode? The firewire port only works when the camera is set to a HDV compatible mode. You will get NO data out the firewire port if the camera is set to one of the XDCam modes.

Today I installed Windows Media Encoder 9 and started again. The notebook recognizes the EX3 and even shows it in the Source drop down, but no video. A prompt says it doesn't recognize the video output. With help from the Streaming company I was able to get a DV cam to work with the same firewire so I can at least stream 640x360 at 800k and stereo audio. It looks good, but I sure would like to get the EX3 working.

Seth: Thanks for the suggestions about drivers. Is there such a thing as an EX3 driver? Because both EE4 and WME9 recognized the EX3 I assumed that it had the right driver.

Chris: I've put the camera in SP1080 24 which is one of the three modes that can be output by Firewire. I tested the output on my other notebook with Adobe OnLocation and the video comes through just fine.

At this point I am suspecting that neither EE4 or WME9 can handle the EX3 output.

I suspect the EX3 has some sort of strange FW protocol - I've used a host of camcorders with WinMedia Encoder on XP, with no problems. I'm not sure you can use it with HD though. Does the EX3 downconvert to SD for the FW output? Most of the cameras I used were Sony...

Have a look at this comparison of EE4 vs. EE4 Pro features. (http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4_Overview.aspx#CompareFeatures)

The freeware version does not support MPEG2 input formats. That probably means that any HD or HDV modes of the EX3 are not supported. It may be worth downloading the trial version of Expression Studio 4 Web Pro (http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/Default.aspx) to see what it does with your EX3.

The docs seem to indicate that standard def DV over firewire would work with the freeware EE4.

I'm a total neophyte at video streaming. I have a company that does video streaming that is offering to provide us the service for free, but I'm ignorant about the encoding process. I have a Sony EX3 that has firewire out which I can send to a PC, but what is the solution then? Do I use Windows Media Encoder? Has anyone had experience with it? What are the best encoding rates to use? Is anyone streaming HDTV?

There are two free video encoders that I've used for webcasts: Windows Media Encoder and Adobe Flash Live Media Encoder. With these programs, you have your camera attached (fire wire will work, or you can hook a camera into an osprey card or something). You set up your stream to be a certain bandwidth and size. We usually did something like 640x360 @ 755kb/s. (700kb/s video 55kb/s audio). Our upload speed tests were usually around 1.5mb/s so we didn't want to press our luck. Just remember that you have to stream in square pixels...so 720x408 or 640x360 or 480x272...etc etc. You fill in the server you're uploading to (pushing the stream) and start encoding.

I prefer Windows media encoder only because you can "build a show" by creating video sources in addition to your main live source. (If you have your camera hooked up via firewire, for example, your camera can be set up as the "live" source, both audio and video. If you wanted to run a video clip in your show you could create an avi or wmv or whatever and play it, and then set the clip to "roll back to first" source. So it would execute the video and roll back to live. You can even set a video up to play the video while having the audio continue from the live source (like a voice over). So many things for a free program!!!

We used to do soccer broadcasts and would have a 15 minute halftime "show" which would consist of bumpers, a commercial spot, interviews, highlight reels from previous games, an ad for the next match, then a bumper then back to live as halftime ended. It was nice to be able to automate it.

The trick is having somewhere to upload your stream to so others can connect. If you have a company providing bandwidth, you're golden.

JR