Media Streaming for Dummies? 41
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:easy: VLC (Score:2, Informative)
TV and a Hauppauge MediaMVP (Score:1)
VideoLAN (Score:5, Informative)
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.
VideoLAN works great with Mac OS X 10.3 (Score:5, Informative)
QT (Score:5, Informative)
First non-VideoLan post?
Re:QT (Score:3, Informative)
Jeff
The title... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The title... (Score:1)
Re:The title... (Score:2)
My school and other ones I know all have big conduit run to clusters of outlet boxes. pulling another cable wouldnt be too much work (you already have people on staff that can do it in most districts and some rooms already have cable). And if they all have TV's, its probobly a better way to display than force the teacher to make their computer accessable to everyone.
Quicktime Broadcaster? (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/broadcast
uh, what for? (Score:1, Interesting)
How about "not at all".
Why doesn't your school consider that new concept "teaching" rather than "watching tv"?
I can see it now. You set up a "streaming server" for 26 classrooms (a SMALL school). The teachers, administrators, students spend so much time getting their 'content' and 'hard hitting news' ready that the whole thing about 'teaching' and 'learning' are pushed aside.
Plus, how much mo
Re:uh, what for? (Score:2)
There are two reasons why this is a good idea:
1. The news that the kids themselves generate needs an incentive to be generated. It gives the kids an audience for works they themselves created, and encourages further efforts (and learning in the process).
2. The audience isn't passive. The shows encourage discussions and recruit new members. By utilising preexisting technology (using the LAN instead of installing a cable f
Re:uh, what for? (Score:2)
Quicktime streaming (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Use Flash (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Use Flash (Score:4, Informative)
OS X mplayer with Tivo support? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I've hacked the Tivo to do streaming, but can't currently watch the streams on an OS X box. Which is a shame, because that's exactly where I'd like to watch them from.
All help or comments appreciated. Well, within Slashdot norms obviously...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:OS X mplayer with Tivo support? (Score:2)
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)
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 ev
Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:2)
Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:1, Flamebait)
Just suggesting a FREE (at least as in beer) option - there's no reason to let your zealotry blind you. I used macs until I was 18 and since then have worked with just about everything else under the sun.
Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:2)
I like how you mutter something about zealotry blinding me. I've been encoding windows media format files on my OS X box for over a year now. It's a pain in the ass. It's less than a pain in the ass than dealing with editing on a Mac, then encoding on a Windows box, and then distributin
Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:2, Informative)
However, I do appreciate the information on WMP.
Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:1, Offtopic)
Thanks
Re:Windows Media Encoder 7/9 (Score:1)
Okay, I'll criticize you.
I also tend to lean towards wondering why anyone would bother using WMC in a project where the targets are all Mac OS X, and (it sounds like there are good odds that) the boxes used for producing, editing, and broadcasting will also be Mac OS X.
I mean, my impression is that unless a tech guy (used to MSWindows style apps) is going to be running the show, it'd be better to avoid the platform jumping issues.
Even if the guy in c
No question (Score:5, Informative)
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/s
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) (Score:2, Informative)
Information about downloading is found by scrolling down the page. Have fun :)
Always Love The Quicktime (Score:2, Informative)
Sorenson broadcast (Score:2)
QTSS and QuickTime Broadcaster (Score:2)
It sure sounds to me like they want a live-compression-and-broadcasting tool. QTSS only broadcasts hinted movies (movies that have been prepared for broadcast by QuickTime Pro or one of the other tools designed to do that). It can't take in a video source and broadcast video out the back end.
For that you need QuickTime Br
Don't even need QTSS (Score:2)
-fred