Live Video Stream to a website

backrubman · March 30, 2014

I'd like to set up a G-rated live video stream on a public website for animal lovers. Much the same kind of project as some sites where you can watch the goings on at a birds nest or even a mare giving birth. Basically I have the equivalent of a eagles nest nearby (something similar) that many folks all over the world might be interested in watching, live from time to time.

There are a large number of services (e.g. ustream is one of them, etc.) and that's the way that most people do accomplish this. These services (and there are many of them) allow you to do this very easily but the outbound bandwidth on my internet connection to stream full motion video 24 hours a day, 7 days a week out to one of these content providers is going to be too high to use one of these video reflector services and I don't anticipate having 1000 concurrent viewers any way so I'm thinking of running the video streaming server here locally and sometimes there may be 10 viewers and other times probably none, so my 100 Mbps Internet connection can no doubt handle that and not show up on my ISPs radar. Of course if it did become popular enough I would have to switch to using a service that has more bandwidth than I do and can accommodate thousands of concurrent viewers.

Does anyone have any experience in setting up their own live stream video server that will support multiple end points (e.g. any browser), etc. perhaps displaying it in Adobe Flash Player, HTML5 or silver light (or all of them, depending on what is best for the viewer's specific browser)? If so, what software did you use or would recommend? I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone that has any experience in doing this or something similar: One of the reasons I am doing it is it is something I haven't done before.

Kellyxo · March 30, 2014

This is something I have played around with before.

There are a few free software packages that will do what you need, try broadcam. It's commercial, but free to use if you add a link to their site. Otherwise google is your best friend to find other options.

I am a little confused by your network assessment. I am not sure of any residential provider offering a 100mbs upstream connection. Double check to see what your upstream connection actually is (go to speedtest.net). You should also run your server locally on your network to get a sample of what the traffic will look like before you max out your connection.

Hope that helps a little

Kelly

Xo

backrubman · March 30, 2014

...There are a few free software packages that will do what you need, try broadcam. It's commercial, but free to use if you add a link to their site. Otherwise google is your best friend to find other options.

Thanks so much, that's pretty much exactly what I was looking for; and I had done a lot of Googling and not came across Broadcam. It's only $60 for the professional version so if their trial version works out for me I have no problem upgrading to the commercial version.

I am a little confused by your network assessment. I am not sure of any residential provider offering a 100mbs upstream connection. Double check to see what your upstream connection actually is (go to speedtest.net).

Yeah, I'm getting 98.7 Mbps down and 11.04 Mbps up with the speed test. It's a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem provisioned at 100 Mbps but obviously the upstream isn't symmetrical. We also have Fiber offered at 100 Mbps (200 of you want to pay for it) in my area and there they do advertise that one of the advantages of their service (over cable) is that it is symmetrical. I tried ustream and a couple of other video reflectors but it ends up being about 800 kbps continuous (and after about an hour of broadcasting it would disconnect for some unknown reason). That's not a problem at all (the bandwidth, but the unexplained disconnects are) except my provider does start overage charges when you go beyond 250 GB/month so I can't leave that up 24 hours a day. At least 8 Mbps of my 10 or 11 upstream is always totally available so that means 10 viewers before I start to get over subscribed. Hopefully broadcam has some settings I can tweak to allow for a few more viewers at peek times. I'll be giving it a test run later today.

Thanks again, that's just the kind of pointer I was looking for!