[chbot] Live video stream

Sun Jan 17 05:14:04 GMT 2016

We did not go ahead with the live video stream for the following reasons:

   - no-one local was willing and able to set-up, baby-sit and pack-down
   the video equipment
   - no-one local was willing and able to do any editing or other
   post-production
   - the few remote viewers would not have watched a live stream, due to
   time-zone differences

On the day of the event, there was a howling north-easter, with unoccupied
garden seats blowing around. Unattended video equipment would have
suffered. We did have audio reinforcement which worked well, although there
was quite a bit of wind-noise despite wind-shield on the mics. It was not
workth recording the audio.

I did play around with YouTube live streaming. There was no obvious minimum
viewer requirement. It worked fine with OBS (Open Broadcasting Software)
running on an Ubuntu 14.04 box. A mobile phone had adequate bandwidth to
stream the video to the server, but not enough for a live monitor at the
same time. I thought it strange, because one is mostly uplink, the other
downlink. Watching the stream on a different computer with an independent
connection to the internet worked fine, as expected.

I would certainly consider YouTube live streaming for a future event. It
was easy for a suitably experienced person to set up, but not for Grandma.

Stephen Irons

On 2 December 2015 at 11:56, Stephen Irons <stephen.irons at clear.net.nz>
wrote:

> It took 30 minutes to
>
>    - read the youtube help on live streaming
>    - create a stream event on youtube
>    - download and install OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) on my PC
>    - configure OBS to capture video and audio and send it to youtube
>    - watch the event using a different web browser (but on the same PC)
>
> Have to do some Real Work now, but it looks promising, provided that I can
> satisfy myself that:
>
>    - the event can be relatively private (invitation only, or at not
>    advertised and unlisted)
>    - the event can be completely free of adverts; I suspect this will be
>    a pay-for privilege
>
> Other factors
>
>    - 3 hours at 1.5 MBits/sec is 2 Gbytes. Allowing for 25% streaming
>    overhead gives 2.5 GBytes. Have to get a data addon: 2 degrees charges 50c
>    per MB for casual data usage (for a total of $1200!), but offer a 3 GB data
>    addon for $50, or about 1.7c / MB
>    - you standard USB data modem advertises 21 Mbits per sec, which
>    should be enough to carry 2--2.5 Mbits per sec for the media stream
>
> OBS knows how to stream to other broadcasting services, so now I have a
> few other alternative to investigate:
>
>    - Twitch (apparently popular with gamers: rather than playing, you can
>    watch others play)
>    - hitbox.tv
>    - beam.pro
>    - DailyMotion
>    - Livecoding.tv
>
> Thank you for the pointer to broadcast services: I thought there must be
> some available, but was obviously searching for the wrong thing.
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> On 1 December 2015 at 23:30, Spencer Travers <spencer.travers at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Have you looked at YouTube live streaming? I'm not sure about being able
>> to restrict it to just your family viewing, but it would take care of a lot
>> of the back end for you.
>>
>> Spencer
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 11:25 PM, Stephen Irons <
>> stephen.irons at clear.net.nz> wrote:
>>
>>> We have a family celebration coming up in January, and want to be able
>>> to provide a live audio and video stream from the event for people who
>>> cannot be there.
>>>
>>> I have the following available:
>>>
>>>    - Video camera with microphone input, microphone, and AV capture
>>>    device that are compatible with V4L2
>>>    - Laptop running Ubuntu 14.04 desktop
>>>    - Mobile data modem
>>>    - Low-spec VPS (2 core, 4G RAM, 1 Gbps network connection, 5 TB
>>>    bandwidth per month) running Ubuntu 10.04 server
>>>
>>> The plan would be for the laptop to capture the audio and video which
>>> will send it to the server. Absent family and friends can then connect to
>>> the server, preferably using a web browser, to watch the proceedings. There
>>> will probably be 4 or 5 families watching from around the world.
>>>
>>> Some rationale:
>>>
>>>    - I prefer the video camera, microphone and capture device to a web
>>>    cam because it should give more control over the picture and sound quality.
>>>    - I prefer the video camera, microphone and capture device to an IP
>>>    cam because I don't want to spend the money.
>>>    - I don't want all of the guests connecting directly to the laptop,
>>>    as all their traffic goes via the mobile data modem -- I suspect costs will
>>>    mount up quickly, though I should estimate what it will cost.
>>>
>>> Now, VLC can capture the video and stream it to another instance of VLC
>>> using a few different protocols. I have not had success with the audio yet,
>>> but it might just need to swear at it a bit more.
>>>
>>> Motion and ZoneMinder might be appropriate, but ZoneMinder does not
>>> support audio.
>>> Can anyone offer any advice, before I spend days playing with things:
>>> what software to use, what to avoid, what have I not thought of, will my
>>> low-spec VPS be adequate to server 5 streams, any other thoughts?
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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