Broadcast Now Episode 15 "My youtube resolution"

[ThinkingBrainFilms]

In addition to that post below, hardware solutions for switching in live streaming mean next to nothing because the encoding and transmitting of the stream to the net will always take place in software. For example, one of the setups in our studio is to do everything on a tricaster, and then send the signal to the vidblaster machine for streaming because it can do multiple encodings on one machine.

As an extra comment, there is a guy on justin.tv the streams 1080p video at 5000kbps for free.

[nathanrh]

@ThinkingBrainFilms I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here, but I will note however that there are hardware encoding cards on the market.

[ThinkingBrainFilms]

There are a few reasons that the "lag" and quality will drop. Chief among witch is your processor. At the studio I work at we use this beast of a machine with the top of the line i7 and this will stream a 720p signal at 3mbps, 30p, with only 3-4 seconds of lag. On the older core 2 duo imac, using the same settings, there is close to 30-40 seconds of lag with lots of artifacts because the processor can't handle the load. Also justin.tv, ustream, ect. add lag to your signal because of processing.

[nathanrh]

A few things I'd love to hear about:

1) What can we expect from a modern high range i7 setup with a software switcher? Can they handle multi cam HD, overlays, etc? What are the limitations?

2) HD streaming suits the tech demographic, but is probably too high for a mainstream audience. Any suggested bitrates and resolutions to capitalize on a broader international audience? Maybe 853x480p as an ideal alternative?

[nathanrh]

You can encode at whatever bitrate you want, and as high as you want. The codec will not cause lag, dropped frames, etc. Those errors occur because of hardware and connection limitations on either the encoding or decoding end.