Webcasting with Video Conference Equipment
December 23, 2005
We have been seeing a steady and increasing interest in our clients desire to use their existing video conference equipment as the AV front end to a live webcast.
Using your video conference equipm,ent in this fashion is simple and the results are quite good. Simply use your video conference equipment to “call” our video conference equipment. We then take the video and audio from our conference unit and send it into our webcast system where it is delivered to a global audience.
Options such as presenter controlled slide shows, audience Q&A, audience registration and our exclusive, who’s watching capabilities are all easily added.
This is a great way to beat the high cost and complexities of on site video signal acquisition. And, it makes a high quality, good looking webcast. Of course there are a few technical issue you must know. Well, actually, only one issue. We only accept IP based video conference calls at this time (no ISDN). But, if enough people ask for the ISDN version we will gladly add that ability.
Like always, feel free to comment or ask questions.
February 14, 2006 at 8:24 pm
What about Failover? Do you (or can you) provide redundant Videoconference devices on your end to allow a reliable second source should the first source fail?
February 14, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Fail safe roll over is a common request that can be handled in a number of ways. We accept satellite, terrestrial (T1) and IP based video conference feeds. You can pick any of these and set up a second signal for back up. Most of our clients do not opt for back up and we have an extremely high reliability and success rate with single source signals. Keep in mind that we already run double delivery networks for stream delivery. And, even if you add a redundant signal acquisition and encoding, you still have multiple single points of failure. (I.E. AC power on Location, camera switcher, audio mixer, etc.).
Have you had a failure of signal acquisition with other providers?
February 15, 2006 at 2:50 pm
The local electric co dropped the grid for 3 seconds. Even though our gear was backed up and stayed up, the routers rebooted. The result has been a complete site hardening project. Fail over at every point down to the camera.
February 15, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I would suggest we set up a redundant encoder with a redundant connection.
Example: Use an on site encoder with a high speed link to our stream network. This will be IP based and will require a public IP or properly configured reverse NAT. It will require a sustained conection of at least 500K. We can then set up a second on site encoder and connection OR use a video conference link back to our facility for a back up. We can configure the live event for automatic rollover in case one encoder loses it’s signal. Again, we can handle numerous types of sugnal acquisitions. Just pick any two and one will be a primary and the other will be a back up. The live stream goes out through a global CDN and is backed up with a second stream network. Short of the Internet failing, we will be very redundant.
September 9, 2006 at 5:03 am
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