On 7/1/09 1:24 AM, "Charles Wyble" <charles@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/