Re: That ustream again - and other stuff

[Jim Goodin <jimgoodinmusic@gmail.com>]

Rainer and all - 'new YT' yes, I thought it ustream or others is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  As mentioned yesterday I'm doing my 2nd show this weekend and I have found the technology very friendly.  I'm running on a Macbookpro using Safari 4.0 the beta one.  Using the built in iSight cam which kicked in flawlessly after accepting the flash security prompt.

 

I did make the mistake last time of monitoring off my USB controller's output and got the delay which I just lived with.  I use a Tascam 224 USB.  It was a larger amount of delay than NinJam which surprised me.  Prior to the controller I feed my looper and instruments into a Behringer mixer which I should monitor through and will this weekend.

 

I'm eager to figure out the managing of two inputs meaning muli NJ feeds to the one account so Daryl and I can do a live Chinapainting show as well as other possible collaborations.  I'd also like to figure out how to feed to video feeds to it so I could do an alt camera angle.  Silly quest but can I mount a second web cam by just using another USB port?

 

It's early in the game for me with this so I don't have that much to share beyond my setup and interest.  I think Matt [Stevens] is the old-timer here and may can shed other light.

 

I will mention and I think he wrote the list or may have jsut been me but Chris (CPR) suggested the idea of having an LD channel on one of these services and having like a whole day of LD with a diff act every hour akin to a virt fest which I think is a marvelous idea.

 

Anyhow it's cool...

 

Jim

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com> wrote:

So that ustream thing is catching on rather quickly (I think it was
Jim who said "that's the new youtube" or something), so I'm wondering:

What are your experiences with it, or with other similar services, and
how do they compare?

I have been exchanging ideas with fellow list member Jeff Duke, and we
also did a (successful) test run combining justin.tv and Ninjam. The
general summary of our experiences (in a nutshell):

There are four services known to us for video streaming: ustream,
justin, mebeam and stickam.

It seems that ustream and justin are made for broadcast, while stickam
and mebeam focus on the video group chat application.

Both ustream and justin allow you to use FME (standalone free flash
media encoder) to work together with their service. However, the
implementation is different: while with justin it's sufficient to just
connect to your stream with FME, with ustream you need to logon, open
a broadcast concole, have that pickup the FME stream and work from
there.

Ustream has some stability issues in that configuration and will often
not start up properly. (Which is a pity, because it's the only way to
get stereo audio).

Ustream has that cool "co-host" feature. A workaround: with justin,
you can just take several widgets of individual streams and combine
them on one web page (successfully tested).

At least ustream and justin.tv have problems with some browsers (most
specifically IE).

Summarizing, here's a quote from a message I sent to Jeff:
               Main Goal               HQ Video possible               Stereo Audio    stable  co-host
ustream broadcast                       X                                (w FME)                   -              X
justin  broadcast                       X                                (w FME)                   X              -
stickam vchat                           -                                     -                    ?              -
mebeam  vchat                           -                                     -                    ?              -

MY QUESTIONS TO YOU:

1. alternatives to these services which allow for combining video
feeds? (With the exception of that, justin really works fine for me)
2. your experiences using ustream with FME (please also mention platform)

Thanks,

            Rainer

-- 
ReUse, an introspective textural aural journey coming soon...

music links...
www.jimgoodinmusic.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com
www.myspace.com/jimgoodinmusic
www.myspace.com/chinapaintingmusic
www.myspace.com/jimgoodinviolinelectro
www.myspace.com/jindream
www.youtube.com/jimgoodinmusic

video work/editing...
www.vimeo.com/jimgoodindigital

social networking...
www.twitter.com/jimgoodinmusic