Archive for the 'Webcasting' Category

Comparing low-budget streaming solutions

Published by
Vegard
at Tuesday, September 25, 2007 in Streaming, Software and Webcasting. 14 Comments

I’ve been rummaging the web looking for inexpensive solutions to live streaming, and came up with this feature comparison to help me decide.

The solutions are combinations of server software, client software and streaming formats. They all satisfy my basic criteria, which are:

  1. The video capturing equipment delivers an H.264 encoded media stream to the streaming server.
  2. The streaming client runs in a web browser.
  3. The solution supports both live streaming and video-on-demand.

H.264 is a recent MPEG-4 compliant standard for video compression, providing good video quality at substantially lower bit rates than eg. MPEG-2 (as used in DVD’s). Quicktime Broadcaster (see previous post) produces H.264 streams, and I’m happy with that.

Flex is a framework for creating rich Internet applications based on Flash, running in Flash Player 9 (which, according to Adobe, has 90,3% worldwide web browser coverage). With Flex you can, like you do with AJAX , build smooth web sites that feel like desktop applications. I like Flex. Flex looks nice:-) Flash Player 9 supports fullscreen video and H.264. Yes, it costs money if you want the Flex IDE software, but you can actually do with the free SDK.

Darwin is Apples free, open source version of the Quicktime Streaming Server, which supports Quicktime, MPEG-4 and 3GP streaming.

VLC is a free cross-platform media player that can also be used as a streaming server. It has to many features for me to comprehend, and I hope I’m not wrong about it’s capabilities to stream Flash.

The comparison

Server:
Client:
Format:		 FMS1
Flex
H.264		 Darwin
Flex/QT2
H.264		 VLC
Flex
FLV
       
Server
Supports progressive download3 Yes Yes Yes
Supports live streaming Yes Yes Yes
Is cross-platform Yes Yes Yes
Supports live transcoding4 No No Yes
Supports mobile streaming5 Yes Yes Yes
       
Client      
Progressive download is cross-platform Yes Yes Yes
Streaming is cross-platform Yes Kinda6 Yes
Supports Rich Internet Applications Yes Kinda7 Yes
Supports fullscreen video Yes Kinda8 Yes
       
Format      
Provides high quality at low bitrates Yes Yes No
Is free for non-commercial use Yes Yes
 Yes
Is free for commercial use Yes9 Yes10 Yes

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  1. Flash Media Server is very expensive, and I include it here merely as a comparison. [↩]
  2. Adobe has locked H.264 streaming to their proprietary RTMP protocol, allowing only their own Flash Media Server. This is a hybrid client side solution using Flex for VoD and a Quicktime browser plugin for live streaming. [↩]
  3. Progressive download means playback starts while the file is still loading. [↩]
  4. Transcoding from H.264 to Flash in this case. [↩]
  5. Mobile streaming with 3GP. [↩]
  6. Quicktime RTSP seems buggy on Linux. [↩]
  7. Flex supports true RIA, QT plugin doesn’t. [↩]
  8. Flex supports true RIA, QT plugin doesn’t. [↩]
  9. H.264 is free when broadcasting from Norway, at least. [↩]
  10. H.264 is free when broadcasting from Norway, at least. [↩]

iCast you iConcert to your iFans

Published by
Vegard
at Wednesday, September 12, 2007 in Streaming, Software and Webcasting. 2 Comments

Klaus RødahlToday I met up with my friend Klaus Rødahl, film producer and half of Film Non Grata. Besides talking about the weather, I was planning to pump him for information on video recording, mixing and streaming.

Klaus showed me a promising piece of free software from Apple called Quicktime Broadcaster. It may be just what I need for my low-budget webcasting ambitions, provided I find myself a MacBook or something similar.

Quicktime Broadcaster (QB) captures video directly through the FireWire port of the computer. That means I don’t need an expensive video card, and that any DV camera will do the job (they all have FireWire output, I’m told).

I can also plug the analog line out from the mixing desk right into the computer’s soundcard, and QB will mix it together with the video. I like!

Text overlays may be possible through some use of AppleScript, but I’m not 100% sure on this one. It’s definitely a must, though.

QB sends out a single stream, which means that an additional streaming server is need to serve more that one viewer. That, and a big, fat broadband connection. Now there’s a challenge for the independent webcaster.

Apple products work with Apple-compatible formats, naturally, so QB uses the H.264 MPEG-4 codec, as well as the 3GPP streaming format for mobile multimedia. I’m not sure this is what I want, so I’m thinking to set up transcoding of the stream on another computer running VideoLAN (also free software, this time cross-plattform). I guess it takes a beefed-up computer to achieve this in real-time.

With your iPhone, you can soon watch iConcerts of your favorite iArtists, live from our mysterious jazz cafe in Oslo.

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