Yuri's Night Webcast
From SEDSWiki
The Yuri's Night Server is capable of supporting webcasting via Quicktime Streaming Server. You could also record video content and host it on YouTube.com like is being done on the Yuri's Night video page.
Contents |
Requirements
- A Mac
- One or both of the following:
- A video source
- An audio source
On more modern Mac's, the built-in iSight camera works just fine. An external iSight camera might be better for placing the camera in a good spot (instead of precariously positioning your computer or laptop). Other USB web cams would work fine too, or even firewire-enabled (IEEE 1394) camcorders.
Quicktime Broadcaster
Mac OS X users can download Quicktime Broadcaster from Apple. Its a pretty easy program to use.
Settings
While you may be tempted to broadcast out the most high-quality stream, please don't. The more you stream out, the less users can connect (bandwidth is finite), so keep it as small as possible. I recommend the following:
Audio Tab
- Check "Enable Audio Stream"
- Select the "3G - GPRS" Preset (cell-phone audio quality)
- Select the "source" as appropriate for what you have -- if you can, don't use the internal laptop or computer speaker, but use something external. An external microphone, or better yet, the direct feed from the house party sound system!
- You probably want to disable "Play-through speaker" or you're bound to get feedback
- All the rest can be left at the defaults
Video Tab
- Check "Enable Video Stream"
- Select the "3G - GPRS" Preset (cell-phone audio quality)
- Select the source as appropriate
- The reset can be left at the defaults
Network Tab
- Select "Automatic Unicast (Announce)" under transmission
- Hostname: yurisnight.net
- File: Pick a name unique to your party, so you don't collide with other partys' broadcasts. Something like 2007_Los_Angeles (Year_CityName) would be appropriate. This is what will appear in the URL for the broadcast.
- Username/Password. Contact webmaster@yurisnight.net for these details. Be sure they know who you are and what party you're affiliated with. If you can also notify us of your intended broadcast times, that will help as well.
- Buffer delay - not necessary to set
- "Broadcast over TCP" -- check this if you're having problems getting the broadcast to work, but if you don't have a restrictive firewall, it should work without it.
- Annotations -- Fill in the details you want associated with your broadcast.
Other
- If you want, you can "record to disk" and we can later archive the party for re-broadcast if you're so-inclined. If you have limited disk space, or a slower machine, you probably want to avoid this however.
- Another performance suggestion is to set "Preview" to "None" once you're happy that things are working (unless you have a fast machine)
- When you're ready to go, hit "Broadcast". The URL for your party is shown in the lower left-hand corner of the machine. It should be something like rtsp://yurisnight.net/2007_YourParty.sdp
Open up QuickTime player, and select File -> Open URL and type in the above URL to check out your broadcast. Again, once verified that things are working, please close this player. This takes up a stream on the server. If you need the preview, use the Brodcaster preview.
Your Broadcast
Once you're set up, you can follow the suggestions from Apple for embedding your party broadcast on your web page. This same URL can also be used inside
Working through problems
If you can't get the broadcast to work, its probably due to firewall problems. You need to be able to get through on TCP ports 80 and 544, and UDP ports 5432 and 5434. If you aren't on a "public" address, network address translation (NAT) or firewalls might be preventing your broadcast. When possible, hook your broadcasting computer directly to the ISP connection, and not behind a firewall or wireless router. If you can't, you'll need to open up the aforementioned ports.
If you don't know what any of this means, you're in for a learning experience. You can tell that you're behind a firewall (or more specifically using NAT) if you address is 10.something or 192.something
Have your own Server?
If you have a server capable of running Darwing Streaming Server (source code is available to run on Linux), please let [email:chris@lewicki.com Chris] know if you're willing to serve as a relay. We need all the bandwidth we can get!
