[Coco] Fest Cam, was: Free websites

[Roger Taylor]

At 11:21 AM 1/25/2006, you wrote:
>Check and see if the bandwidth is availabe for 2.5 days of broadcasting at 
>between 15 and 25 fps while the fest is open.


My suggestion....  forget about the 15-25fps goal.  Windows Media Encoder 
creates smooth real-time streaming video even for the low fps rates.  The 
best thing to do is just stream at a rate that is dial-up friendly or close 
and then everybody can connect and see fairly decent video.  If you're 
connected via broadband, you can set Windows Media Encoder to stream out at 
several rates at once, and the viewers will grab the closest stream to 
their connection (if I'm not mistaken).

I've had a streaming webcam running for over a year now for a 
client.  However, the host I go through to rebroadcast my stream to 
hundreds of viewers is specifically for horse owners.  In other words, the 
cam stream gets advertised on his site so people can see the cam at many 
horse farms, and the webmaster guy puts Google ads on the cam pages.  :) 
.  I'm not sure if he would set up a custom stream for a few days or not, 
but money talks with this guy, so who knows.

Alternatives are: FTP-based frame uploading using something like Active 
Webcam, CoffeeCup WebCam, WebCam32, etc.  Some of those apps come with Java 
applets that you serve along with your cam page and then the viewer's 
browser will download the applet if it needs it.  The applets are usually 
for flicker-free frames.

I really liked the CoCo Cafe webcam feed we did last year.  It was fun to 
see images from the fest and to talk to some of the people sitting near the 
cam.  This 100% HTML scheme didn't deny anybody as far as I know.  To their 
browser, they were simply served an HTML page with an image in it.  When 
they clicked Send to type or after about 20 seconds the screen would 
refresh and they would see new messages and a new fest image.  I'm sure 
whatever method you use this year I may be able to tap into the stream or 
images and show them in the chat rooms again.


-- 
Roger Taylor