Saw this post on another board, thought it would be of intrest for those
wanting to stream live video of shenanigans. This guy gets 24fps
realtime 640x480 video streaming while he is driving his car down the
road, it's awesome. I am looking into how to do this on my bike...
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I get alot of posts and IM's asking me how I stream my live broadcasts
from the car, and what not. I promised I'd explain it, so here goes:
The internet connection is EVDO rev 0, and is provided by Embarq
(Sprint). I'm using a Novatel Merlin v620 in my laptop (or in my DLink
DIR-450 router, when I'm at home). The webcam is a Microsoft Livecam
VX-3000, and it's just a simple USB camera. For the encoding on the
laptop side, I use Windows Media Encoder (free download from Microsoft).
This sends the stream to a virtual dedicated Windows 2003 server (hosted
by GoDaddy) running Windows Media Server.
I set the video bitrate at about 24Kbps, and the audio bitrate at about
10Kbps. It's configured as a "push" stream, to a publishing point on the
Win2k3 server (password protected). The idea here, is that I only need
enough bandwidth on my EVDO connection to send one stream to a server.
Clients (you guys) connect to the server, which has PLENTY of bandwidth.
For my last little test, 66 of you connected to the server, consuming
~9000Kpbs. That's obviously more than even most cable connections are
capable of, hence the need to have it served by a hosted server.
I don't have a contract on the internet connection. I paid ~$200 for the
card, and I pay ~$80 or so for the unlimited internet access. The camera
was around $60 (I think), and the hosting with GoDaddy costs me $36/mo
(for 500GB/mo bandwidth - plenty).
To my Linux loving brethren, I feel your pain. I really wanted to run
VideoLAN, but I gotta be honest - Windows Media 9 is light years ahead
of Open Source efforts at the moment. I gave it my best, but objectively
- I couldn't deny how absolutely kick ass WM9 is. The encoder and server
really are top notch. If you own Windows XP, the encoder is free. If you
own (or are renting) Windows 2003 server, the Windows Media Server is
included. After dicking around with VideoLAN for about a week, I
couldn't believe for feature packed WM9 technologies are, and how
incredibly easy to use it all is. The new WM9 codecs are top notch, too.
I'm REALLY impressed with the video quality, at a bitrate I could stream
off dialup.
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