Posted as part of my new “Creators Newsletter” Email I kicked off last week. If you are creating content and playing with Social Media online, sign up here!
Here is a quick glimpse at what I threw together for a 24/7 live stream. Using Wirecast, Desktop Presenter (a Wirecast-related program) and iTunes.
Wirecast handles the handoff from video to Justin.tv. If I had the horsepower, I can multicast this to Ustream, Youtube (if activated on your account for live streaming) and other providers as well, widening my spread.
I also added a “prerecorded” title over the video so people don’t think we’re really live and try to interact with us. (we promote the Tuesday live in the shows themselves).
In iTunes, I setup a playlist of the week’s content and set it to loop. Set the view for video to a separate window and make Desktop Presenter show that video window for a clean looking stream. ach video resets the position of the video window. Some are 720, 1080, or even SD depending on the project. So I had to move it to the left corner so it doesn’t shoot half the video off screen. Desktop Presenter simply compensates and processes whatever size that is.
Our first few days of testing on one 2007 era iMac running a 2 Ghz Core 2 Due CPU, it ran well enough, but a little low on the frame rate. After changing up to moving the iTunes and Desktop Presenter to what I think is a 2006 White iMac, it’s been smoother, but not perfect. If you have a pretty hefty computer, this is something you can do with ease on one machine as I attempted at first, but then you’re dedicating a more expensive piece of hardware to a 24/7 process. May be a hard pill to swallow.
We’ve had a crazy amount of viewers on the live stream, from 30-150 at a time. There were over 300 separate viewers from my first test. I’m hoping this is something to allow more people to stumble upon our shows since we’re getting a reaction already on the Justin.tv platform. My channel views have grown by thousands since I started this a week ago. All of this while the stream is still not quite as smooth as I would like it.
Want to see how this is doing? Check out the feed at live.sorgatronmedia.com