Live Webcasting

By David on Aug 28, 2007 in Community, Philippines, Web Development

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Wow! I finally got a break in the action long enough to give a few tips regarding Live Webcasting on a grand scale. These methods are not for simple webcasting to a few connections, but for broadcast media.

Recently I was approached by a local television station subcontractor regarding the implementation of a Live Webcast. I am not at liberty to discuss any details as there has yet to be anything confirmed. I will only mention general theories and procedures.

My Scenario:

Stream a live webcast while simultaneously broadcasting the webcast on television AND unicasting a live online video game. Whew! That is a brave and innovative bunch of guys dreaming up this project, especially in a country with limited technology and lack of access to the best equipment. Can this be done? Yes. Is it feasible? Doubtful for a untested market.

Under the best circumstances, here is the proposed system flow:

Television studio broadcasting a live TV show promoting a website’s online gaming program. PC that runs the gaming software is located in the same studio. We connect a $13K Capture Station that will be receiving two seperate inputs.

VGA output from PC with gaming software
SDI output from professional video camera.

Now here is the catch, this must be strictly real-time delivery. Zero or next-to-zero latency from the studio PC to the end-users browser. After researching I determined that the absolute fastest delivery method was Adobe Flash Video Live. Yet, this is very proprietary, which means of course, Adobe encoding and Adobe servers.

Cost of this method of delivery?

Accordent Capture Station Hardware and Software - $13,500.00
Adobe Pro Edition Flash Media Server - $4,500.00 per license (2,500 connections limitation)
On2 Flix Encoder - $999.00 per year

Is this the best way? Absolutely.

Tomorrow we’ll look at a more affordable method.Technorati Tags: adobe, broadcast medium, Community, delivery method, flash media, gaming program, gaming software, live tv, live webcast, live webcasting, media server, Philippines, professional video camera, promoting a website, proposed system, system flow, televion, television studio, time delivery, vga output, video live, Web Development, zero latency