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A
Anonymous
February 25, 2010
Question

Hoping to find help here - streaming live video to server

  • February 25, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 2179 views

Let me start by saying I understand that this may not be the proper place to ask this question, but I am seriously at my wits end. It seems everyone who claims to be video streaming pros' don't know anything beyond ustream.. I am confident that you folks here know more than them seeing as you use adobe media server. I hope you can help..

I am just one portion of a team of people who are trying to put together a live web seminar. I am mostly doing the web aspect of it since i am a web developer, but I am looking to learn a little bit more of the video part just so that I understand it.

Basically I am looking to pick the brains of some of you who do semi-high quality live streams. We have a professional grade mini DV camera (i wish I had the name but i dont at the moment - will soon though). We also have audio mixers for quality sound.

My main concern is the quality of the stream as viewed from the web. I read up about streaming and understand that it's best to stream from a tripod and have little motion in the background - we intend to do this.

What I need to know, more specifically, is the best way to compress the video before it goes out to web. I read about external video capture cards and I also know of software like cam twist.. but i am SOO confused! I can't seem to tell if there is a difference in what these two different things do. Do you need both or just one?? Which is better?

Also, the streaming TO the web.. Obviously you can use 3rd parties such as USTREAM, but I need to either find a 3rd party streaming service that allows for COMMERCIAL streaming (pay to view - i know ustream doesnt have this YET) or to do it myself.

I do own a server and spoke to my server guy and he did say that my server was set up with these capabilities.. but I am a little confused yet again> If I were to stream to my server, what software would I need to connect the video to my server? How do I tell the video where to find my server?

Again.. i appreciate any help I get here.. hopefully someone will have experience with this type of stuff

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    S
    SE_0208
    Participating Frequently
    February 25, 2010

    I do understand your confusion and let me try not to add to it. I will give simple overview and will add details to it later. Hope you have time and patience as I can't post everything right away nor i have access to all the information that you need - i mean all details about it. So let me begin,

    For streaming solution for live broadcast you basically need three things in place ( i mean bare minimum 3 things) - They are:-

    1. Encoding solution: Encoder basically takes the feed from your camera and publishes the same to streaming server. With respect to Adobe, you can use FMLE to take the feed from your camera and publisher to Flash Media Server.

    2. Streaming Server: This will take the feed targetted to it from Encoder and stream it to whoever is requesting for it. In case of Adobe , its Flash Media Server.

    3. Client Application: This is needed to receive the stream (audio/video/data) from streaming server. In your case it will be your web application which should have ability to connect to streaming server, request for the stream and play it.

    Hope you got the workflow and elements in workflow right.

    Now coming to your question of Quality of streams:

    You can use various settings which your encoding solution gives you to get right kind of stream published at server-end. Will try to post more details about encoding here.

    Now coming to Server you have, please find from you Admin guy exact specs of the machine and hardware so that you can compare it with minimum requirements of the Streaming Server you are going to buy.

    As I mentioned you will Encoding Solution to connect to your server and publish stream to it. I think first you finalize the way you want to go about it and then we can go into details and get it sorted.

    Please let me know if you have more queries.

    A
    Anonymous
    February 25, 2010

    Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Yes, I do have patients and time to have you walk through step by step.. I completely and entirely appreciate any help i get. I"m NOT one of those people who comes in yelling "I NEED TO KNOW HOW TO DO THIS AND I NEED IT NOW!!" - not me.


    So basically what you said is what I kind of figured on my own - compression, feed to server, display on web..

    So i guess my more specific questions are, whats the best practice for compressing the video and pro audio so that the quality is still good but the web cast is VERY stable. Like I said previously I have researched Video Capture cards and compression software. When I was using ustream I have used cam twist (I have a mac and apparently adobe media encoder only works on PC) to work with the video files. Apparently this was a SUCKY situation because the stream didn't work AT ALL and kept glitching out and it had to be set at VERY low quality to even get it to work. Now, I also dont know if that was just ustream's servers or what. I basically need a suggestion on compression where i can go into a computer with video and audio separately and compress them together


    So I would like to have the best compression possible. This is for a professional web cast in which the "client" is charging $200 a head for people to view. So it must work and it must work well..

    And now from what I understand, you said that the compression software would be what will also connect the video to the server. I am NOT using adobe's media server - i have my own web server which my server maintenence guy said would definitely work for this situation. He said that I have Red 5 installed on there and is ready for streaming. I do not know much about this, but I did ask him. If you have any input on this please feel free to share.

    So would I set the compression software to output to my server using the IP address? Or maybe a domain name to pass the vide/audio feed from the computer to the server FLV embed script to embed that video that uis streaming in correct??

    Seems like I really am starting to understand this a lot better, and I do appreciate you taking the time to help me out. I contacted some "gurus" online and they basically said i am SOL because this is really hard to do..  Bleh.

    Then I just use a video F

    S
    SE_0208
    Participating Frequently
    March 8, 2010

    OK.. now you got me confused.. AME (adobe media concoder) can be used on a mac. FLME (flash live media encoder) can not be used on a mac

    Whats the differernce between the two. Rememebr that I will NOT be using the adobe server software, so I need something that just works as an encoder that will also connect to the server that I set up.


    Since you plan not use FMS or any other Adobe Server like say FVSS, i strongly suggest you to go to forums of Red 5 (i suppose you plan to use it as per your previous posts ) and ask query what encoders fits in well with Red5. Again let me know if you have queries specific to Adobe products, if its FMS i would surely help and if its another adobe product i will redirect you to proper forum.

    Sorry but I suppose can't help you much further than this

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