Hey guys,
What are the basic requirements to air a live event on the internet? via real player and windows media player? We are trying to air a live mushaira online, we have a good sized budget so we can upgrade our isp and get the nessicity equiptment needed to stream online… looking to broadcast to about 300-500 hundred users world wide.
any help is appreciated..
Re: Streaming Live Events?
Helix Server is widely used for the purpose but it can be comparatively expensive than others like Unreal Media Server (which I have used many times and works just perfect). They now have a limitation of 15 concurrent connections in the Free Version but the version that I downloaded last year for free has no such restriction. I will see if I can find it on my CDs.
Articles and tutorials are there on both Real Networks and UnrealMedia's websites to get you started.
P.S: If it was not mushaira I'd love to see the broadcast.
Re: Streaming Live Events?
itesham thanks alot for ur reply
now if i get helix or unreal media server, do i need to a my own webserver and meet a minimum isp upload requirement? and a domain name pointing to my home webserver?
thanks again
Re: Streaming Live Events?
if u don't have a server where u gonna install that software? ISP upload shouldn't really be an issue unless ur doing it 7 days a week. As for domain name, u don't really need one, although its easier if you do, you can use generic ones like dyndns.com offers, specially if you have a dynamic IP address from you ISP.
Re: Streaming Live Events?
One solution - Flash Media Server.
Re: Streaming Live Events?
Let me elaborate a bit more on some of the issues you may want to consider such as the bandwidth requirements - 400 (approx) * bytes/stream. I would highly doubt that your internet connection is able to handle that much bandwidth. Also, the hardware issues such as CPU processing required to capture the broadcast and push 400 streams at a time & RAM, should be taken into consideration. You are better off using a subscribed solution..
Re: Streaming Live Events?
thanks everyone for ur replies...
Abdullah- where can i get a subscribed solution?
Re: Streaming Live Events?
where can i get a copy of flash media server 2?
kisi kay paas ho toh help me out here yaar
Re: Streaming Live Events?
there are many - just search for flash com hosting, and check with different vendors for a one time event solution.
The server is part of this puzzle. You will need a client to capture and the subscribers will need a client to view the broadcast. Chances are that some of these vendors may have out-of-the-box solution.
Now, if you were to do your own thing, you will need to make sure that there's one root server which let's say streams to 3 or 4 leaf servers. You can then establish some sort of logic in the subscribers' client that it connects to the server with least amount of connections for load distribution.
In my experience, an application which requires 8-10 streams to be published by the server i.e video conferencing between 2-4 people is enough to choke an average cable connection with download capacity of 1 mbps. Once an internet connection is getting choked, the remainder users will not be able to connect to the server. Also, the latency increases in existing connections which results in delay of audio/video, out of sync transmission.
So, in any application where live transmission is required, you need to juggle a lot with bandwidth, by load distribution for larg scale applications, OR capping bandwidth for each user in smaller application, and delivering data only which a client can actually "consume" - you dont need to deliver a broadband stream for a dialup client.
Chances are that any subscribed solution will have these issues dealt with.
Re: Streaming Live Events?
abdullah thanks for all the info
i dont think that at this point we are able to afford an out of the box solution.
i just spoke with my isp and they offer 16mb download and 1.0 mb upload at 59.99 dollards.
so i'm guessing if i setup a win2003server box and isntall flash media server on it - i can get a few hundred connections to view the live event?
or is taht too much to ask for lol out of the setupt hat i'm thinign about
Re: Streaming Live Events?
where can i get a subscribed solution?
any recommendations on live streaming server hosts online? i googled it and couldn't find much
Re: Streaming Live Events?
^http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/fvss/
Personally, I have dealt with Limelight for CDN - OK service. Check with Akamai and Vital Streams as well for price comparison etc..
Re: Streaming Live Events?
Akamai is expensive but very fast. VitalStream is almost as expensive but not quite as fast as Akamai. A reasonably priced one was Voxel but they got acquired by someone and I don’t know what they are doing with it now. Limelight is ok as Abdullah said. The one with the best cost/benefit ratio is CacheFly. Here are their pricing: http://www.cachefly.com/plans.html
If you want to do it with a low budget try using this free p2p CDN called Coral CDN:
Enjoy!