LAN webcast advice needed

[henny]

Hi all

 

I often do webcasts of events uesing tools like wirecast out to verious streaming server providers but I have a tricky one comming up.

 

The event is in a school and they want to steam from the hall to Aprox 100 classrooms. They only have a 10/10 Internet connection so means uesing a web based streaming Server a no go as there would not be enough bandwidth for all the clients .

 

So I'm looking a running a streaming server on the LAN.

 

Ideally I would run a muiltycast stream over UDP but as yet I don't know of the schools switches block muiltycast trafic or not , also I need the steam to be viewable In the browser as being school pcs they are limited to what they have installed.

 

Any tips or server systems to try would be apprichated

 

Thanks

 

Ian

[jason5d]

sounds like you know your stuff and have the right idea. Do you have a server pc(s) set-up already?

What software do you want to use?

 

The best thing to do is go to the school and test.

 

We do webcasting too, using our own satellite dish with 3/4g backup. We've found unless

we're doing audio only we always have to do loads of testing, Especially if we are doing

a specialist set-up. BTW who do you use for CDN services?

[henny]

Mainly use dacast as our cdn. They cheep but missing some features , no server side record and for each different bitrate you want for the cliebt end you need to stream out a different bitrate stream as they don't offer server side bitrate conversion.

 

The fun with this school is the it is farmed out to an outside company who are very protective of their systems

[jason5d]

we looked at dacast, have you used their pay per view system?

 

Schools often use outside companies for IT services. We would ask the school

to get the IT company to play ball or charge them loads to get round

the problem.

 

So what server software do you plan to use and how long till the broadcast?

[henny]

We about 5 weeks out and currently have no idea what platform to go for, if their switches will pass Udp muiltycast traffic then a system that can utilise that so less need for bandwidth and a juicy server.

[Wol]

Is the event within school hours, or generally outside of school hours? Assuming 2500 people (damn I wish my old school had a PC and projector in every classroom!) will be watching the same thing I can only assume it might be not during teaching hours?

 

What content is it which you're streaming? Just the output of a capture card? Screen capture? etc.

 

My first port of call for anything like this for internal streaming only is VideoLAN player (VLC) which should be able to send out a stream to something which a browser can view directly then just capture in from whatever you need. Although it does depend on how stupid the schools systems are. If they're still running on things like IE6 only, rather than a standards compliant HTML5 browser, then you may have less luck!

 

Also its Multicast, short for Multiple cast. Not sure where you keep getting "mu ilty cast" from!

[bruce]

I'd be surprised if multicast routing is enabled globally in a school environment. Equally, it's unlikely to be blocked at the switch level. Which means that it'll work at layer 2, but not at layer 3.

 

Translating that into real world language and a typical school environment, there's a reasonable chance that it would work within each building, but not between buildings.

[henny]

It's a new build school only been open 6 month and its a single 5 story building , so lets hope muiltycast works between cabs,

[jason5d]

You need to talk to the school network guy/company then do some tests.

I would use a beefy linux server running Adobe Media Server extended or pro.

VLC is an option as mentioned above, but I can't recommend as I've not used

it for streaming.

[the kid]

I will have a look tomorrow @ work, we use a bit of freeware for the radio station that also allows video.

[henny]

I would use a beefy linux server running Adobe Media Server extended or pro.

 

That is one of my plans, the other is to stick a trial of win server 2012 on a system and run win media server as all the pc's should have win media player

[Wol]

http://images.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/streaming-howto-en.pdf definitely worth a read. You should be able to view one of the options in the default windows media player installed on the PCs.

 

I'd be surprised if multicast routing is enabled globally in a school environment

 

Was lovely when I started at uni as there was a full ipv6 multicast enabled network and everything just ran on VLC instances bouncing stuff all over the place. It's a shame that over 7 years later, this isn't more common :-(

[bruce]

Guessing you went to southampton then :-)

 

Multicast is becoming more common, but there are still very few people who properly understand it. And even fewer who know how to diagnose problems with it!

[lite_lad]

Quicktime broadcaster may do what you need? presuming its installed on the machines (which is fairlyyy likely, if not I think it might be viewable in a browser, but really cant remember!)

[sleepytom]

you need a streaming server at the heart of this. I would suggest using Darwin Streaming Server running on OSX or Wowzer running on windows (or either running on linux is you know what your doing).

 

If you have multicast restrictions then you'll need to setup a streaming server within each layer 2 section, these will relay the central unicast stream to local multicast clients.

 

it's all fairly easy to setup these days providing your comfortable on the command line and have a decent knowledge of streaming protocols / codecs etc.

 

I hope this helps

 

cheers

tom