How to do a live video webcast?
 

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.

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.

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.

2 the rescue
 

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

Try ustream.com
 

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.

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.

Encoding Process?
 

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.