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Looper's Delight
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Hi everyone,
as some of you (including me) have already used the service of ustream
as a host and others have shown interest to do so in the future, I'd
like to suggest sharing experiences here and allow for Q&A - and I'll
be the first to do so. So please Matt, Marc and any others, do follow
suit.
Note that everything I write here is based on my rather limited
experience (so far, I have followed one show - by Matt Stevens, and
done two myself), so if there's anything unclear or plainly wrong -
please mention that as well!
1. NOMENCLATURE:
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Followingly, I'll use the term "host" for those who author a stream.
Those who watch it will be "listeners". The thing that brings the
stream from the host to the listeners is the "video service".
2. ABOUT USTREAM:
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To my knowledge, ustream (ustream.tv) is the first and so far only
video service which offers this service ad-financed, and consequently
free of charge both for hosts and listeners. It thus differs from
other possibilities available in the past, which offered server
space/time paid for by the host, or video services paid for by the
listeners, with royalities paid to the host (e.g. ligx.de, formerly
onlinemusicstar.de).
3. SERVICE DETAILS - HOW IT WORKS:
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The basic structure at ustream is the show. A show is basically
something with a title, perhaps a background and header image, tags, a
descriptive text, a video archive and a webpage (with chat and rating
features) on ustream. If you host something, you basically connect to
your show, and listeners go to that show's webpage.
Generally, listening to a show and chatting does not require
registration, hosting and rating shows does (this is similar to e.g.
youtube).
Hosts can restrict access to shows or functions like chat, either to
registered users in general, specific registered ustream users or by
password.
Shows can be recorded and are thus available in the archive on that show's
page.
Widgets are available both for the show's stream and for the chat
functionality (see e.g. moinlabs.de for an example of its use).
Ustream is registered with openid and has interfaces to twitter (to
automatically send tweets to announce your show), facebook (don't know
how this works, I'm not a facebook user - anyone?) and youtube (you
can automatically upload your recorded shows to youtube - which is
awesome!).
The technological basis is Adobe Flash Media. That means to listen to
the shows you need a flash player, to host shows you need an encoder
(either a browser plugin or the free standalone version - see below).
4. THE THING FROM A HOST'S PERSPECTIVE:
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There's the possibility to use either standard video quality or high
video quality. The approach for doing a show differs slightly in both
cases, so I'll describe them independently.
a) standard video quality
Simple. You click on "start broadcast" in your show's administration
page, a window pops up asking to access your camera/audio interface
and you can click on start and if wanted record. Any (I think
WDM-driven) audio and video device can be chosen as input sources, so
anyhting from your cheapo laptop webcam and builtin mike to
professional video camera and audio interface should work. (nb: some
pro audio interfaces sometimes only install ASIO drivers by default,
and the same may be true for pro video cameras. So you may need to
specifically install those drivers). There are some adjustments you
can make (most specifically, I believe you can turn up audio quality
up to 96kbps even in standard quality mode), but as said before, I
don't have that much experience with the standard video quality
approach.
I don't know which browser plugin or other "thing" is used for that -
obviously, it was already installed on my system.
b) high video quality
For using high video quality, there are two approaches possible. One
is to use a specific browser plugin (only available with Windows
machines and I believe on Firefox), the other is to use the (free)
Adobe Flas Media Encoder (which may or may not only work with
Windows/Firefox - I believe so but am not sure).
Number one basically works like with standard video quality, only you
need to install that specific plugin first.
Number two works a little more cumbersome: download a XML file, load
that into FME, setup remaining stuff in FME (e.g. camera and audio
source), start transmission in FME, open "broadcast" window in your
browser and start broadcast.
The obvious advante of using FME is that you can make your settings in
more detail (e.g. sampling frequency, audio bit rate, mono/stereo,
screen size etc.).
5. FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE:
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First, let me point out that my experience here is limited: both of my
sessions so far were done on a somewhat meager computer (2GHz
PentiumIV running XP), and in every case I tried using high quality
streaming (see below). In that configuration, the constant system load
on the computer while streaming is in the 70-80% range. Now people who
have worked with things like Ninjam know that in some cases it is not
a prudent idea to have too high constant system loads, because spikes
in system load may then throw off the communication. See more on that
in the section on "open questions".
First tests with the standard quality setting looked promising, and
setup is really easy: enter the info for your show, click on the
broadcast button, select and allow access to video and audio source
and click "start broadcast" (and "record" if you want to) and off you
go.
In my two test runs so far, I encountered several problems, such as:
* when using the high quality plugin, the browser (Firefox) would
crash in rather short time intervals. Resetup was easy, however.
* The combination of ustream with the FME standalone did not always
work. "Cannot connect to server" from FME or the browser-based part
not detecting the transmission are rather common.
Loss of transmission was far more uncommon with FME than with the
browser plugin, but then again, starting again was more complicated
due to the various issues mentioned above.
(for this topic, I can fairly easily sort out "lack of upstream
bandwidth" as a problem source).
* Sometimes, within the ustream website, odd behaviour occured. Both
"This is not you show" when clicking on the "broadcast" button (being
logged in and going to it via "my shows" and all) and getting a "404
not found" when going to a show's page did appear several times.
* The Twitter interface did not seem to work - meaning I got the info
it had sent the message to twitter, but it didn't appear there.
* For some reason, I was not able to engage the record show
functionality when using ustream with the standalone FME.
Audio and video quality: I can only report on Matt's session here,
because obviously I didn't look at my own sessions that much. Both
audio and video appeared very acceptable in Matt's case. In those
circumstances when I would send a loop into the transmission and check
on another computer, the same applied (again, using the 96kbps quality
setting for audio).
6. OPEN QUESTIONS:
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a) stability: transmission breaking down
Can any other user comment on the stability issues, also describing
their setup (OS, computer type, normal or high quality, FME or plugin
etc.)? Have you done anything to effectively combat any stability
issues you might have had at first?
b) stability: UI, not stream-related
As I mentioned, besides the transmission breakdown from time to time
there were occasional issues as "this is not your show" or "404 not
found" messages. Has anyone else experienced this?
c) audio quality
Jeff already commented on "warbled audio" before. Jeff, how did you
adjust the audio quality slider in your broadcast window? I seem to
remember that its default value is close to minimum, with the maximum
setting in the plugin being 96kbps, so that may have been the reason.
I also seem to remember (as Jeff does) that shows by other hosts (e.g.
Matt) were of acceptable audio quality. Matt, Marc, can you comment on
your settings?
d) co-hosts
There is the possibility to define several co-hosts for your show. How
does that work? Can they host simultaneously (like we could do a
visual kybermusik), or do they all have access to the same show at
different times (so we could set up an "odd looping" show, and we
could play concerts at different times on the same show)? Or something
in between..."ok, it's getting rather boring with Rainer here, but I
just hear that there's some interesting development in Orlando, so I'm
passing to my colleague who is watching Jeff's performance...". Need
to check that out.
7. NEXT STEPS:
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I'll try using another computer to see if that sorts out those stability
issues.
This will include transmission stability, ui issues and anything else
I have reported about those topics.
Check twitter interface
Check co-host functionality
Play with different quality settings - see if this is reflected in
recorded videos
And most importantly: do another session (this time with my
trombone-based "Rübezahl" setup), most probably this Saturday.
Looking forward to your comments and experiences!
Best,
Rainer