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robistech
08-25-2012, 11:28 AM
Hey everyone,
I do a lot of the tech and video production at my High School, and I'm running into a little challenge with a Live Video Set Up. Essentially we want to do live morning announcements that go out to all the classrooms in the school. The Production end is easy. my setup is basically a FireWire cam, some mics, a mixer, and Wirecast with Live Virtual Sets and a Green Screen. The issue I am facing is what to do about a CDN. Obviously we can't use anything live Ustream, Justin, or Livestream because of the ads. The only other solution as a CDN goes would be Ustream's Watershed, but that's a bit pricy for our budget.

I tired to do a little research about hosting a local CDN. Anyone know what software we would use and how we would do this? I know Wirecast will stream to an RMTP server, so I did a little looking into Flash Media Server. All we need is a simple video player with audio that we could send the teachers a link to, or embed on a website.

Any ideas?

sunkast
08-25-2012, 11:50 AM
What about a streaming service like Influxis (http://Influxis.com)? They have some pretty reasonable prices if you don't need to stream 24/7.

You may also want to look at running a Wowza media server. It's pretty much the same as FMS. Also Red5, which is an open source, free streaming media server. Albeit not as polished or sophisticated as FMS or Wowza. But the price would be right.

RadarGaming
08-25-2012, 12:17 PM
Im a fan of http://www.bitgravity.com/ they work great.

robistech
08-25-2012, 12:24 PM
I'll look into those. Thanks for the suggestions!

jamesdelfresco
08-31-2012, 09:19 PM
Im sorry if this sounds stupid but why would you want pay for a CDN if you can get it for free via /ustream and bambuser

robistech
09-01-2012, 08:03 AM
Im sorry if this sounds stupid but why would you want pay for a CDN if you can get it for free via /ustream and bambuser

I'm planning to do live broadcasting at my High School. There's no way I can go with a free account from anyone because of all the ads.

mcphillips
09-01-2012, 12:18 PM
Bambuser, at least for now, does not have any mid-roll ads. As far as the pre-roll ads, they have to pay the bills.

If you have the funds, paid bandwidth is the way to go. Take a look at DaCast.

AndrewSeabrook
12-28-2012, 05:08 PM
As an ex-media teacher I get where you are coming from. Recently I came across this post on the VMix forum,

"Check out "Unreal Media Server". I use it to "pull" from the WMS encoder in vMix and then rebroadcast. The Unreal Media Server application runs on a dedicated 'fast' machine that outputs to a gigabit network. Only one stream is needed from the vMix system.
I have been using Unreal Media for a few years now. I believe it is still free for limited use. I think the free limit was 15 connections tops. Check them out at http://www.umediaserver.net"

I had a quick look at it and it seems to be an interesting product.

Also Avermedia has released some streaming boxes that might also be worth looking at. http://solutions.avermedia.com/en/products/streaming-encoder-server
They are a bit pricey but if they work as per the sales pitch....

In a school environment you want to be able to stream internally, as well as externally. And it seems counterintuitive to pay for a CDN and the bandwidth required to send signal externally only for it to be consumed internally.

Let us know how you get on!

erictimmer
12-28-2012, 06:34 PM
VLC can stream on a LAN right? Should be easy to set up a locally hosted site on your network to run a video stream on.