skymouse
Tue, 23 Feb 10, 1:11 AM
To members of WHP—the next webcam is 07 March, with Tammie Lee, followed by Faye on 14 March. This means there is a week without a webcam (even though there are still a couple of shows from the past which we haven't caught up with yet).
I just wanted to let you know the reasons for this gap, and keep everybody up to date.
In the most recent show, with Mystiq, I had to use a new computer to broadcast the webcam, because of hardware problems with the previous one. During the show, I was able to record the stream produced, and I can see that with the present setup (really a combination of the computer the way windows media works, and several other things) there are just too many people who are likely to be getting brief drop-outs or other glitches.
Part of the reason (though not the only one—it's a combination of several things, not all of them related) is that the higher quality streaming that we now use, with the video alone streaming at 1,024 Kbps, can easily be too much for the system, in various places between our computer (where the streaming starts) to the computer of the person watching it. When glitches occur, they aren't always being caused in the same place every time, which is one reason why it is not always easy to locate the problem or to know if and when it can be improved for any one individual person watching the show.
Obviously, I want the show to be as perfect as possible for as many people as possible. Lots of people watched the show with Mystiq the other day—nearly 60 simultaneously, at times—but there were not many who entered the chat room to join in the chat with Mystiq during the show. This often happens, and although people have all kinds of reasons not to want to come into the chat room during the show, I suspect that maybe some of them were busy trying to tweak their media players to make the streaming more trouble free. This doesn't really meet my high standard, and therefore I am currently working on solutions.
I can announce that part of the solution, for the longterm, is that I will be changing the streaming system. Currently, we are using Windows Media for the streaming, and this has served us well until recently, especially when we had the lower bit rates which (in their time) was acceptable. I will be switching the streaming system to an H.264-encoded stream, which does not involve Windows Media. On your computer, you will see receive the video and audio in a flash-based player that comes up automatically in your browser—it will not require a seperate program like windows media player or VLC (though in fact you will also be able to use a program like VLC to view it instead of viewing it in your browser, if you want to do that). The H.264-encoded streaming gives better compression, and therefore quality, especially at the bitrates we're using, and this will be even more apparent as the bitrate increases with time. Furthermore, the new streaming system has a different approach to multiple bitrates from that of Windows Media, which in English means we'll have better ways to make sure you get a stream that works properly with your computer and the Internet, from moment to moment.
The new streaming server and software are already purchased and installed at the web hosting centre.
I still have a lot of technical stuff to complete before I can use the new system, and it will be some weeks before it goes live for the webcams. All kinds of new things have to be set up and tested before we are ready to make the leap.
Meanwhile, I've decided to take a short-term approach to the existing webcam system, and improve its functioning as best I can without wasting time on massive changes, or additional hardware that will only be used for a few weeks at most (and which I can't afford). Part of this change (which will remain until we start using the new system for the webcams) will have to be a compromise, in which we use just a single stream (i.e. a single bitrate, instead of the current two different bitrates). The choice of which bitrate (and associated settings) to use at my end is not a trivial task. Quite apart from testing the actual peformance and quality of each possible choice, the fact is that the higher the bitrate, the better the video will be, but the more people will be unable to view the webcam for the next few weeks because they don't have sufficiently good broadband connections. It's going to be impossible to please everybody, no matter what settings I use.
The other part of the equation is a replacement for my existing Internet connection fot my studio. In order to stream at increasingly high bitrates (especially if and when I return to multiple bitrate streaming to cater for people with both fast and slow Internet connections), I will eventually have to upgrade my connection. This aspect isn't done yet. It is planned to occur a little while after we make the change to the new webcam server. Therefore, even with the new server, there will be a short period during which the streaming will be at a single bitrate, and hence we will continue to face the dilemma mentioned above for a little while longer.
Because of the time occupied by getting the existing system more usable for a lot more people, while also continuing to develop the new system, it's certainly going to be at least a week before we can use the webcam system again. We therefore have a gap until Tammie Lee's show on 7 March (followed a week later by Faye's show).
I will keep everybody updated as this progresses.
I just wanted to let you know the reasons for this gap, and keep everybody up to date.
In the most recent show, with Mystiq, I had to use a new computer to broadcast the webcam, because of hardware problems with the previous one. During the show, I was able to record the stream produced, and I can see that with the present setup (really a combination of the computer the way windows media works, and several other things) there are just too many people who are likely to be getting brief drop-outs or other glitches.
Part of the reason (though not the only one—it's a combination of several things, not all of them related) is that the higher quality streaming that we now use, with the video alone streaming at 1,024 Kbps, can easily be too much for the system, in various places between our computer (where the streaming starts) to the computer of the person watching it. When glitches occur, they aren't always being caused in the same place every time, which is one reason why it is not always easy to locate the problem or to know if and when it can be improved for any one individual person watching the show.
Obviously, I want the show to be as perfect as possible for as many people as possible. Lots of people watched the show with Mystiq the other day—nearly 60 simultaneously, at times—but there were not many who entered the chat room to join in the chat with Mystiq during the show. This often happens, and although people have all kinds of reasons not to want to come into the chat room during the show, I suspect that maybe some of them were busy trying to tweak their media players to make the streaming more trouble free. This doesn't really meet my high standard, and therefore I am currently working on solutions.
I can announce that part of the solution, for the longterm, is that I will be changing the streaming system. Currently, we are using Windows Media for the streaming, and this has served us well until recently, especially when we had the lower bit rates which (in their time) was acceptable. I will be switching the streaming system to an H.264-encoded stream, which does not involve Windows Media. On your computer, you will see receive the video and audio in a flash-based player that comes up automatically in your browser—it will not require a seperate program like windows media player or VLC (though in fact you will also be able to use a program like VLC to view it instead of viewing it in your browser, if you want to do that). The H.264-encoded streaming gives better compression, and therefore quality, especially at the bitrates we're using, and this will be even more apparent as the bitrate increases with time. Furthermore, the new streaming system has a different approach to multiple bitrates from that of Windows Media, which in English means we'll have better ways to make sure you get a stream that works properly with your computer and the Internet, from moment to moment.
The new streaming server and software are already purchased and installed at the web hosting centre.
I still have a lot of technical stuff to complete before I can use the new system, and it will be some weeks before it goes live for the webcams. All kinds of new things have to be set up and tested before we are ready to make the leap.
Meanwhile, I've decided to take a short-term approach to the existing webcam system, and improve its functioning as best I can without wasting time on massive changes, or additional hardware that will only be used for a few weeks at most (and which I can't afford). Part of this change (which will remain until we start using the new system for the webcams) will have to be a compromise, in which we use just a single stream (i.e. a single bitrate, instead of the current two different bitrates). The choice of which bitrate (and associated settings) to use at my end is not a trivial task. Quite apart from testing the actual peformance and quality of each possible choice, the fact is that the higher the bitrate, the better the video will be, but the more people will be unable to view the webcam for the next few weeks because they don't have sufficiently good broadband connections. It's going to be impossible to please everybody, no matter what settings I use.
The other part of the equation is a replacement for my existing Internet connection fot my studio. In order to stream at increasingly high bitrates (especially if and when I return to multiple bitrate streaming to cater for people with both fast and slow Internet connections), I will eventually have to upgrade my connection. This aspect isn't done yet. It is planned to occur a little while after we make the change to the new webcam server. Therefore, even with the new server, there will be a short period during which the streaming will be at a single bitrate, and hence we will continue to face the dilemma mentioned above for a little while longer.
Because of the time occupied by getting the existing system more usable for a lot more people, while also continuing to develop the new system, it's certainly going to be at least a week before we can use the webcam system again. We therefore have a gap until Tammie Lee's show on 7 March (followed a week later by Faye's show).
I will keep everybody updated as this progresses.