HN Explorer

Ask HN: Online video streaming solutions? (Justin, Ustream...)

2 points by Keyframe ↗ HN
We will setup a small studio from which we'd like to broadcast live video/audio to the net. Video should be embeddable on our page, and quality of transmission should be 'good' for a certain value of good (audio being of most importance - since we'll stream live music performances). Chat room along with stream would be a plus. We have no idea of the audience size, but we will stream often (probably 5-10 or more hours per day).

First I looked at justin.tv but I couldn't find ANY information apart from some vague partner page, no pricing, no additional info, no nothing. Maybe I missed something, because we would be a semi-pro setup, not a regular Joe streaming his cat online. So I'm not sure if I could do this at all through justin.tv or not.

Then I looked at ustream, it looks great - there is embedding, there is ustream producer pro, etc... but prices are definitely out of our range. This is something we would do without profit and I may have a budget for it about couple of hundred dollars per year.

2 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 15.0 ms ] thread
jwecker
Hey Keyframe- so, interestingly, one big difference between JTV and some of the others is we don't have a big producer-outreach department, which would normally respond to questions like these- so sorry we missed it!

You may have already invested time into getting set up w/ ustream etc.- np, but since you mentioned this in the other thread I thought I'd respond real quick (:

* There is no pricing, no cost, even if you have tens of thousands of concurrent viewers (we have several broadcasters in that category) at maximum quality.

* We have fewer ads than the others.

* We're mostly oriented around making it a social experience- this helps you because it means the viewers have ways of pulling in other viewers.

* With JTV your stream will be higher quality (measurably) than others.

Check out http://www.justin.tv/broadcast/advanced for options on getting set up- the forums tend to be pretty helpful as well. We can't really help with cameras etc. (a strategic choice)- but once you manage to get set up you'll be absolutely giving the best experience to your viewers.

Hope that helps (:

Keyframe
Thanks Joseph! We haven't set up anything, since we're waiting for the equipment to arrive (and judging by ETA it will be another month or so, sigh).

I'm doing this as a favor to my friends, since I have experience with live TV (I direct live TV and high profile reality shows), so I'll set them up with nice lighting, camera angles, etc. I was looking either vidblaster or wirecast and outputing through flash encoder - SD video, I don't think equipment will be good enough for HD (especially cameras).

I'll give Justin.tv a go first then - basically I was in a dark, since there is a LOT of FUD out there (obviously, since you say otherwise) - about low quality (probably bitrate) of justin.tv streams.

Thanks again!