Media Streaming for Dummies?

Jon writes "Back in grade school, one of the things I helped the school set up/run was a in-school broadcasting system based on a few simple switches that went between a HyperCard stack with cool animations and the kids that would tell the news for the day. It's a great way to get kids involved in school, and my mother who is now a principal at another school is wanting to get something similar set up again. However, they don't have cable outlets in all the classrooms, and so I've been pondering streaming the content over their network. All the rooms are running Mac OS X. So, I turn here to Slashdot to ask, if you had 26 classrooms how would you approach the problem of getting video to them in an inexpensive way?"

easy: VLC

[denthijs]

videolan supports multicasting and VLC player is available for osX

VideoLAN

[rixdaffy]

is this what you're looking for?
http://www.videolan.org/

The VideoLAN project targets multimedia streaming of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestial television channels and live videos on a high-bandwidth IPv4 or IPv6 network in unicast or multicast under many OSes. VideoLAN also features a cross-platform multimedia player, VLC, which can be used to read the stream from the network or display video read locally on the computer under all GNU/Linux flavours, all BSD flavours, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Solaris, QNX, Familiar Linux...

VideoLAN is free software, and is released under the GNU General Public License. It started as a student project at the French École Centrale Paris but is now a worldwide project with developers from 20 countries.

More information about the VideoLAN streaming solution be found in the streaming section.

Re:easy: VLC

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.videolan.org/ [videolan.org]

QT

[JDWTopGuy]

QuickTime streaming server. Free. LINK. [apple.com] Should be pretty easy.

First non-VideoLan post?

VideoLAN works great with Mac OS X 10.3

[Nice2Cats]

I can testify that VideoLAN works great with Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther", in fact on a G4, it works better than the stupid DVD Player that Apple includes by default. The important part is the G4 processor, it seems, since the G3 doesn't have the AltiVec [wikipedia.org] stuff that is needed for fast video. G3s can do it, they just have to work a lot harder.

Re:QT

[jterry94]

I often use quicktime streaming server with slides now to stream lectures. QTSS is free and slides now is inexpensive. Found at http://www.slidesnow.com/ [slidesnow.com]
Jeff

Quicktime Broadcaster?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would this do it?

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/broadcaste r/ [apple.com]

Quicktime streaming

[gozar]

If the clients are all OS X there is a pretty good chance there are some OS X servers in the building. Turn on the Quicktime server [apple.com] and install Quicktime Broadcaster [apple.com] on a client machine. Plug the camera into the client and you can broadcast through out the school.

If your content is on VHS tape use a media converter to send the content to Quicktime Broadcaster (or edit it into Quicktime and put it on the server).

Re:Use Flash

[magefile]

And if you want to do it cheaply, have the students create a presentation in Powerpoint or OpenOffice, then use OpenOffice to export it to a Flash file. Much cheaper than FlashMX.

Re:Amazing…

[jonjohnson]

Well, two things. 1) Some kid generally creates the animation, which in turn makes him/her learn how to do that, and 2) The kids read the news to be able to broadcast it.

Interactive learning is the best way to go. Not only do kids hear the news from their peers, they also get to participate in sharing the news, as well as helping out with the process behind the broadcast, as minimal as it may be. The days of using text books only while having a teacher lecture are over!

As the OP, I just wanted to thank everyone. I did google for this, but I couldn't get the right combination of keywords -- too many people sell "live video streaming."

QuickTime broadcaster looks like exactly what is needed for this job.

Thanks again everyone. Sorry for being too easy ;)

Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9

[severed]

Windows Media Format production on a Macintosh OS X is a pain in the ass. Does Microsoft offer a free or even pay program to encode Windows Media on Mac OS X? If your answer is yes, mind providing a link? (Yes, I'm aware that they released an SDK a million years ago, but come on, sit down and program an encoder? I'm a Mac Guy - Sheesh!) The only option that I've been able to find is by using Discreet's Media Cleaner version 6.0 for OS X. It's an expensive program, and it's kind of clunky, and it takes forever to convert from the format that I edit in on my Mac to a Windows Media file. I've never been particularly happy with the output, it never quite seems as good as the quicktime or at the output that gets cranked out pretty fast on a P.C. Even so, you have to settle for an older version of windows media...

However, the masses have windows media player installed on their computer by default, and so I've got to keep cranking out the files. But in answer to the original question for this slashdot post, you'd be insane to want to do windows media format in a mac environment when quicktime is quick and easy and works so much better.

Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9

[jonjohnson]

I am the OP, and there isn't a single PC in the school. They're having trouble finding one to control an LED-based sign they bought. However, they have hope because the people who made the sign are working on a Mac OS X based controller.

However, I do appreciate the information on WMP.

No question

[mkiwi]

Definately Darwin (QuickTime) Streaming server. Not only can you use it to take video directly, but you can set up other stations to broadcast a single stream to many clients. Sort of like a mainframe with middleware then clients, this solution is great if you have an older network or have bandwidth concerns.

DSS/QTSS is extremely easy to use- it is controled via a web browser. Apple even included functionality to drag and drop between different parts of the streaming server website, something i've never seen anyone do.

go to:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/st reami ng/

to download the free version (it has the same functionality as the normal version). While you're at it, you should get a license of QuickTime Pro so you can hint and screw around with the bandwidth of static video files.

Re:No question (html link)

[mkiwi]

Sorry, I didn't know slashdot put a limit on how long an individual string could be! Here's the link: Streaming Server [apple.com].

Information about downloading is found by scrolling down the page. Have fun :)

Always Love The Quicktime

[The Lost Supertone]

Dang, and here I thought the first post would be about quicktime streaming server. Oh and remember people, QTSS is OPEN SOURCE. That's right, Apple has a fair number of OSS products, fortunately most of them tie back into the OS so it's great for them. But enjoy working with Quicktime, I'm glad Apple keeps the tech advancing. The player could use an overhaul but the underlying tech is amazing.