Nanog Webcast Equipment

Wed Jul 1 14:18:16 UTC 2009

On 7/1/09 1:24 AM, "Charles Wyble" <charles at thewybles.com> wrote:
> Would love to see replies and/or summary on list if possible.

Since theres interest, I'll share a multicast solution that has so far
worked for us for internal use. (Abilene/Internet2 connected institutions
may use this publically too.)

After getting multicast working, we used a DV camera that our marketing team
had (camcorders work too) and connected it via firewire to a laptop. We ran
a product called Wirecast (we used MacOS, Wintel version is available too),
which can switch between multiple video sources, static images, video files,
and even presentation computers (signal is network-delivered) etc... And
output simultaneously to several destinations which can include multicast
and unicast addresses, with each stream at a different quality.

We had to be sure quicktime was installed on the client machines, and we
created a web page with the benefit of AC_Quicktime.js (google for it;
you'll find a copy with full instructions) which allowed clients to
subscribe to the "large" multicast feed. For remote sites with small links,
one could provide a link to a smaller multicast feed.

For clients who could not do multicast for whatever reason, the "small"
multicast feed was subscribed to by an OSX server running the Quicktime
Streaming Server (built-in). It retransmitted the video in unicast. (You
have to do this by placing the SDP file in the "Movies/" directory of the
server.)

The wirecast license cost is $450 for the big one and theres a free demo.
The number of viewers is limited by your network and user support
infrastructure. All the other components we already owned. And, as any
photography nerd will tell you, quality isn't a function of codec and
bandwidth alone. A webcam produced a usable but unremarkable image. Using
the Real Camera made a world of difference and made the stream look
broadcast-quality. 

The opportunity to do a company-wide multicast hasn't come up yet, but we
keep it in our back pocket. Company-wide testing went without a hitch.
-porkchop 

-- 
Michael Kaegler, TESSCO Technologies: Engineering, 410 229 1295
Your wireless success, nothing less. http://www.tessco.com/