How do I do a live wedding webcast?
 

What do I need to offer live wedding ceremony webcasts? Obviously I've got the camera & laptop equipment w/ internet, but I'm a bit foggy on where I go from there. Where would I host it?

What OS are you using and how many people do you want to be able to view the webcast at the same time?

On Windows, you can use the free Windows Media Encoder (WME) to take a live feed from a camera (typically DV) and stream it live such that anyone with Windows Media Player can watch. It can stream to about 10 clients at the same time. To allow more, you need to get additional (not free) software to act as a streaming server that works with WME.

I'm on a Mac. I wonder if iSight could do this? I'm probably looking at maybe 50 people max.

You can get the Quick Time Broadcaster and for 50 people you will probably need to just send a single stream out to a host who can then relay it to your clients. Google Quick Time streaming and you will get some companies. I have never gone with Quick time so I cannot refer any hosts but for $50 you do not need to spend the money for a Big CDN unless your client wants to shell out a lot of cash. Most CDNs wont setup shop for less than $500~$1000 and a CDN is wayyyyy overkill for 50. You can use your Isight to stream. I think it can also take any standard video camera over firewire but I have not personally done this.

You could use a free live Web casting service. Here are three possibilities.

Yahoo! Live
Ustream.tv
Justin.tv

Use a service provider that specialises in live wedding webcast
 

Our company, I Do Stream.com , has a comprehensive solution for videographers to offer live wedding webcasting to brides.

For a successful live streaming event, you need to think about all the components that
goes into a successful live streaming event. Most people think only about having the right equipment on site but you need to think about the infrastructure as well. For example, viewers in India and Japan watching a live stream from the US should experience as though there are in the US watching it. And let’s not forget about the most important piece, the viewers. What happens if someone has trouble viewing the broadcast? You may potentially have 50 to 100 viewers calling you because they have a problem viewing? Do you really want viewers to contact you while you're onsite and under the gun? For this to work successfully you need to have all the pieces of the puzzle.

We've developed a comprehensive solution for the videographer to webcast:
- Easy to use broadcast software
- Online viewer support and broadcast monitoring
- Interactive and seamless viewing experience (chat and guestbook)
- Integration into your own website
- Content Delivery Network (CDN)

We have low per event pricing or monthly plans. For more information visit our partner program page. I Do Stream Partner program.

Many free live webcasting sites deliberately lower the quality of the video stream in order to accommodate for the thousands of live webcasts that are occurring simultaneously on their site. The reliability also suffers because of this. Do you really want viewers to experience constant buffering while watching your important event?

We've had many videographers who have used the free sites switch to us because they could not reliably provide a live webcast using a free webcasting site.

Call us at 860-681-5414 for more information.

Philip Ly

No offense Philip, but a company specializing in live streaming video should not have on their front page an embedded video from YouTube..... even if they produced the video and put it upon you YouTube.

Host the video yourself and give videographers a chance to see how your hosting service works. I embed the YouTube version of my videos on my web site because my business is creating videos. Not supporting the bandwidth & disk space necessary to host lots of video content (aka what a CDN should do).

But your service does look like a very interesting offering.

Oddly enough, I just got a request to do a live streaming wedding to relatives in China that cannot get visa's to attend.

Is there anyone here that has ever done this before? I'll be checking into IDoStream and others. Free is not a requirement. I want it done right. I prefer the ability to have multiple data streams for different bitrates so the relatives could choose their connection speed based on their connection (which may be horrible for clients all the way over in China).

first you better use a PC, because it is 80% of the market, so you have 80% chances that your viewers will look the stream on a PC.
This means there are chance they do not get quicktime or a quicktime only codec installed.
Windows media player has a free encoder (windows media encoder) that has all the features you need.
This kind of encoding require a very powefull PC.
the simplest way is to use a composite to Firewire converter (canopus ADVC55 or 100).
with 256k bandwith you still can get a decent result but 512 is really better.

on the other side, you simply create a webpage with an embedded player linked directly to the stream or to a stream server.
ideally you could host the stream in china, so it would be more efficient to ditribute.
or even host it on two different providers, so you are sur it will work.

Interesting. I've looked into some of the free providers listed above. Not too bad, but obviously consumer sites meant for "here is my free webcam" type of streams.

Creating the web page would be easy, but the embedded player linking directly to the source footage may be something a bit beyond my skills. I'll have to look further. THanks for the heads up.

It is really simple.

If you are using a real streaming sevice they will provide you with the URL of the stream to connect to. With that information you can just add that to the page you create. It is easiest with Flash as you can use the JW Player and then set the stream variable to the URL they gave you and you are set :)

windows media encoder create the page for you , you have nothing to do.

How about stickam.com They work great with either pc or mac... wheather your watching or broadcasting. And.. it's free. Stickam is a popular video chat service, it's suprisingly really good quality. Stickam also I believe, provides you with your own sticam.com/youraddress so you would just have to direct watchers to that location.

Good luck!

I have been looking for information on how to do what you describe, but so far I have found very little. And the documentation I have found says I need to have a Windows .NET 2003 server to stream the content as the Encoder Server. Nothing seems to indicate that this is possible on a single computer.

Were you able to ever do this personally, or are you saying you read that it was possible?

Jason, only if you want to broadcast to more than 50 computers, you will need Windows .NET 2003. I've personally used Windows Media Encoder to broadcast an opening ceremony at our office to other branches of the company. I didn't use .Net 2003, I just downloaded the encoder, installed it and broadcast it through Windows Media Player and up to 50 PCs could have shown it. The camcorder was connected to the PC via firewire.

The users on the PCs were given an I.P. address, they just turned on their Media Player and entered the I.P. numbers to view the ceremony.

P.S. Not to contradict what was said earlier about Media Player showing to only 10. 10 is the default setting, but you can change this setting in the registry to 50, but 50 is the maximum PCs you can enter.

Ahh. I was selecting the wrong option in the setup steps. I choose the :push to server" when I should have chose the "clients will pull down" option.

Yep I tested it out and was able to stream a 270Kbps stream from my GL2 -> firewire -> shuttle PC (Core2Duo 2Ghz-2GBram) with 40% CPU utilization -> USB wiFi adapter -> Linksys WRT54GL -> Linksys cable modem -> to a friends work computer. Not bad. But depending on how multiple connections are handled, a consumer internet connection will pretty much only allow one connection. Unless I bump the window size down to 120 from 320x240.

Now here is another question for ya'll.... I would expect that 15fps would be a better use of bandwidth than 30fps, with all that standing around etc. I would rather devote more of the bitspace to the audio than the extra frames. What would you as a viewer of a wedding in a far far away nation rather have?

1) Higher resolution video (ie the 320x240 screen instead of 240x180 or 160x120)
2) Faster frame rate (29.97fps vs 15)
3) Stereo audio vs FM quality (-96kbps from stereo) vs Voice quality (-28Kbps from FM)

I actually do consulting on this now, which is a direct result of a contract I had
doing live webcasts for state meetings. I have used Windows Media Encoder, Wirecast (which ROCKS), Quicktime Broadcaster, and LiveChannel. Windows Media Encoder
can send to as many people as you want, if you hire a streaming server provider.
Akamai has a couple smaller subsidiaries that do this, they do a great job. My meetings
had from 98-305 viewers, and I never had a single problem. It's really a two part
process. First, you set up the whole room for 'video production', cameras, mixer,
microphones, and such, then you set up the webcast part. It takes a bit of time
and a little knowledge, but I'd bet most videographers could handle it, I did the
whole webcasts by myself, running cameras, switching, audio mixing, and titling,
setting up the webcast, and all. Not the best way to run things but I did what I
needed to do with the budget I was given.....and they were happy so that's
all that mattered.

amazing, I just got asked to do this and came on here and BAM here is this thread.

So realistically I can't really do windows media encoder from a laptop right?

and I would need a fairly fast internet connection?

I used it from a Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz with 2GB of DDR2 RAM on a shuttle PC connected to the internet with my Linksys USB WiFi adapter (B/G) to a Linksys WRT54GL running WEP on CH1, connected to my CableOne modem, on a residential consumer speed cable internet connection (3000Kbps/300Kbps), and tested it with my friend from his work connection. We averaged a 250Kbps stream with ONE viewer.

At 320x240x15fps with pretty bad audio he was able to view just fine. The CPU sat around 50% the entire time, so a beefy Laptop would be needed.

Also, what would you charge in addition to your regular fee to do this?

I have no clue.... it is hard enough to get Brides to book video in our market, let alone live web streaming. I would probably ad on $500 at first and see if that was worth it.

I did it with an older single processor Windows laptop using Windows Media Encoder and it
worked just fine. I sent a 300kbps stream out to my streaming server.....actually they
had me set it up so they could 'pull' from me. I also had a dedicated T1 line just for my
webcast that no one else was on.

I charged over 2 grand for this service, each day I did it. Of course I was taking care of everything, including paying for web server space, setting up the dedicated line and
all the rest of it. It was also a 4 hour event each time, a little longer than most weddings,
but that's what I charged.

"I would probably ad on $500..." then you are working for free + the hassle if it does not work.