Testing a TV feed

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Testing a TV feed
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Zarax
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Works fine here, takes about 30 seconds to buffer on my 10mbps line...

--
Marco Zara: MVP - Digital Media

Windows Media User Community: www.wmwiki.com
"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:eUmxlWT5FHA.3532@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

Quote:

Should be 25fps - left the TV on (in background of webcam to give audio
and a little live screen change) - I'll set something swinging ;-)

Thanks for the input - try again ...

"Mike M." <nospam@someplace.com> wrote in message
news:uJWElST5FHA.3276@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
I have similar results as Neil on a fractional T1 from Florida. I can
hear
the tele playing fine although there isn't much action on the web cam.
Do
you have a kitten that can play with a ball of yarn or something? ;-)
About 30 secs of intial buffereing and then some rebuffering after a
couple
of minutes. What frame rate is your web cam streaming at?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%237ia2PS5FHA.332@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
WME crashed when I tried to switch feed (it does that sometimes?) -
reboot
seemed the best solution - so a new WMP URL as I have now reconnected to
DSL - no static IP here.

http://172.200.33.70:1219/

If you get a chance see what you think of the webcam/mic feed - this is
the
best I have gotten so far.

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to
clumsy to me. Have read a little about ASX files that will forward to my
current URL from a website?

Or?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23dBTAFS5FHA.2092@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Thanks for the very useful feedback Neil, yes, I saw your IP connect,
and
had already done an IP look-up to establish you were accessing from
telewest.

Encoder is running on a 2 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM, c. 4GB free
disk
for virtual memory. All regular apps are now running (ZoneAlarm,
Avast!,
IE, OE, TaskMan - the only thing I have learned to kill recently is
the
United Devices distributed science project client as it seems to hog
200MB
of memory - even though it runs as low-priority cpu-wise). Killing it
seems to make a huge improvement in encoding (I guess as I am then
getting
access to real RAM rather than VM).

Why do you think it would buffer every two minutes? My end or yours?

Not sure if it is actual stereo either - but it is encoding two
channels
rather than one at 32Kbps

The provider is AOL UK on their Silver package (1mbps upstream,
unlimited
traffic). Probably very little current local contention - might not be
that way at evening time though as my neighbours have DSL accounts
too.

My aim is to provide 320*240 feeds from either my TV Capture device or
Webcam/mic combo to only a few DSL contacts over an *optimum* stream.
(Probably only one will tune in at a time).

I'll switch over to my webcam/mic on the same URL if you get the
chance
to
test it too..

Thanks again for all you help (previous & current)

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" <neil@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:30n3n15l047iu3c6pncq2ii1v9peo9k827@4ax.com...
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 10:32:46 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Here is the URL of my live TV feed to copy into Windows Media Player
(File,
Open URL).

http://172.202.193.98:1219/

Anyone out there have time to check it and give me feedback here on
audio
and/or video quality etc ? Should be 25fps at 282Kbps (a single
client
might
get near that given my DSL limits) with 32K audio stereo.

It was me testing at 10:50 GMT+0000 and it worked fine. Initial
buffering down a 1mbps DSL was 20 seconds. The picture quality was
pretty good (though not surprising given the source ;-).

It buffered again for about 15 seconds after approx. 2 minutes and
would probably continue to do that throughout. Not a bad result
considering it's a live feed - no stuttering so you must have a
decently beefy encoding machine to do it realtime - 2.5GHz+ ?

You might get some gains by dropping to 15fps unless you're planning
on providing horse racing footage. You can then drop back the data
rate for video to say 150-180kbps.

Also you may as well drop the audio to 20kbps MONO rather than
stereo.
Using both of those changes could drop your bitrate to sub-200kbps.

I couldn't tell if you were encoding it as stereo but it's a waste of
bandwidth for web TV right now - we're not getting HDTV and 5.1 which
is why I'd modify that and shave 12kbps off the stream. "Every bit
counts" when you're sending from your home DSL.

BTW which provider do you have, getting 240kbps outgoing reliably is
pretty good - telewest provide 4M/384k on the next upgrade, but
that's
still not really enough for more than 2 TV streams at say 480x290
size

HTH
Cheers - Neil

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 0545-0, 11/07/2005
Tested on: 11/9/2005 3:21:46 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 2000-2004 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

Zarax
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:30 am Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Most likely, home connections anyways are better for audio streams with
lower bitrates than a 250k+ video...

--
Marco Zara: MVP - Digital Media

Windows Media User Community: www.wmwiki.com
"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:eUbvjuT5FHA.2364@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

Quote:

Thanks - I'll work on that - probably the conclusion is I need to drop
down under my upload limit within a "safe" margin?

"Zarax" <zarax999@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:uQtNdqT5FHA.2604@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
it does a rebuffer more or less every minute here, guess that your
bandwidth needs to be bumped up a bit, you may want to try lowering your
bitrate at least 20kbps down...

--
Marco Zara: MVP - Digital Media

Windows Media User Community: www.wmwiki.com
"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:O1%23KOmT5FHA.2524@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Wondered who 213.140... was ;-)

Thanks - do you get a rebuffer after 2 minutes? If so, any idea why?

Winding down here....

"Zarax" <zarax999@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OA1prjT5FHA.4036@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
Works fine here, takes about 30 seconds to buffer on my 10mbps line...

--
Marco Zara: MVP - Digital Media

Windows Media User Community: www.wmwiki.com
"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:eUmxlWT5FHA.3532@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
Should be 25fps - left the TV on (in background of webcam to give
audio and a little live screen change) - I'll set something swinging
;-)

Thanks for the input - try again ...

"Mike M." <nospam@someplace.com> wrote in message
news:uJWElST5FHA.3276@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
I have similar results as Neil on a fractional T1 from Florida. I can
hear
the tele playing fine although there isn't much action on the web
cam. Do
you have a kitten that can play with a ball of yarn or something?
;-)
About 30 secs of intial buffereing and then some rebuffering after a
couple
of minutes. What frame rate is your web cam streaming at?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%237ia2PS5FHA.332@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
WME crashed when I tried to switch feed (it does that sometimes?) -
reboot
seemed the best solution - so a new WMP URL as I have now
reconnected to
DSL - no static IP here.

http://172.200.33.70:1219/

If you get a chance see what you think of the webcam/mic feed - this
is
the
best I have gotten so far.

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a
website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit
to
clumsy to me. Have read a little about ASX files that will forward
to my
current URL from a website?

Or?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23dBTAFS5FHA.2092@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Thanks for the very useful feedback Neil, yes, I saw your IP
connect,
and
had already done an IP look-up to establish you were accessing
from
telewest.

Encoder is running on a 2 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM, c. 4GB free
disk
for virtual memory. All regular apps are now running (ZoneAlarm,
Avast!,
IE, OE, TaskMan - the only thing I have learned to kill recently
is the
United Devices distributed science project client as it seems to
hog
200MB
of memory - even though it runs as low-priority cpu-wise). Killing
it
seems to make a huge improvement in encoding (I guess as I am then
getting
access to real RAM rather than VM).

Why do you think it would buffer every two minutes? My end or
yours?

Not sure if it is actual stereo either - but it is encoding two
channels
rather than one at 32Kbps

The provider is AOL UK on their Silver package (1mbps upstream,
unlimited
traffic). Probably very little current local contention - might
not be
that way at evening time though as my neighbours have DSL accounts
too.

My aim is to provide 320*240 feeds from either my TV Capture
device or
Webcam/mic combo to only a few DSL contacts over an *optimum*
stream.
(Probably only one will tune in at a time).

I'll switch over to my webcam/mic on the same URL if you get the
chance
to
test it too..

Thanks again for all you help (previous & current)

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" <neil@nospam.com> wrote in
message
news:30n3n15l047iu3c6pncq2ii1v9peo9k827@4ax.com...
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 10:32:46 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Here is the URL of my live TV feed to copy into Windows Media
Player
(File,
Open URL).

http://172.202.193.98:1219/

Anyone out there have time to check it and give me feedback here
on
audio
and/or video quality etc ? Should be 25fps at 282Kbps (a single
client
might
get near that given my DSL limits) with 32K audio stereo.

It was me testing at 10:50 GMT+0000 and it worked fine. Initial
buffering down a 1mbps DSL was 20 seconds. The picture quality
was
pretty good (though not surprising given the source ;-).

It buffered again for about 15 seconds after approx. 2 minutes
and
would probably continue to do that throughout. Not a bad result
considering it's a live feed - no stuttering so you must have a
decently beefy encoding machine to do it realtime - 2.5GHz+ ?

You might get some gains by dropping to 15fps unless you're
planning
on providing horse racing footage. You can then drop back the
data
rate for video to say 150-180kbps.

Also you may as well drop the audio to 20kbps MONO rather than
stereo.
Using both of those changes could drop your bitrate to
sub-200kbps.

I couldn't tell if you were encoding it as stereo but it's a
waste of
bandwidth for web TV right now - we're not getting HDTV and 5.1
which
is why I'd modify that and shave 12kbps off the stream. "Every
bit
counts" when you're sending from your home DSL.

BTW which provider do you have, getting 240kbps outgoing reliably
is
pretty good - telewest provide 4M/384k on the next upgrade, but
that's
still not really enough for more than 2 TV streams at say 480x290
size

HTH
Cheers - Neil

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 0545-0, 11/07/2005
Tested on: 11/9/2005 3:21:46 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 2000-2004 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 0545-0, 11/07/2005
Tested on: 11/9/2005 3:33:53 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 2000-2004 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 0545-1, 11/09/2005
Tested on: 11/9/2005 10:48:02 PM
avast! - copyright (c) 2000-2004 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com

Mac
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 1:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Will get back to you soon Neil - too busy today (not beer ;-)

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" <neil@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:khc4n15ce7m49f8tn6vlt66o8vs06nh9v6@4ax.com...

Quote:

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:51:35 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

WME crashed when I tried to switch feed (it does that sometimes?) - reboot
seemed the best solution - so a new WMP URL as I have now reconnected to
DSL - no static IP here.

http://172.200.33.70:1219/

If you get a chance see what you think of the webcam/mic feed - this is
the
best I have gotten so far.

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to

www.whatismyip.com will get your current address reasonably reliably,
else you want to google for "dynamic DNS" which might cost a small
amount, but will get you a resolvable DNS entry that tracks your
changing IP. Or, see below.

clumsy to me. Have read a little about ASX files that will forward to my
current URL from a website?

Or?

Or.... well actually you might end up being my first tester before
year end. I've a site which does the IP and port lookup and
dynamically hosts the page displaying the player based on that.

I've got a client side script with fixed encoding settings almost
ready to go, and the website scripts work more or less OK.

But I stalled in the summer due to beer, and haven't picked it back up
since due to paid work. It would have to be modified to pickup from a
TV card, and they *can* cause the encoder to crash when you shut down
the process, as you've found.

Try neil<removenospam>@coma<remove>tose.free<remove>serve.co.uk and
we'll try some stuff out together.

Site will be at www.directstreaming.com along with some tools and
other goodies.

Cheers - Neil

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23dBTAFS5FHA.2092@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Thanks for the very useful feedback Neil, yes, I saw your IP connect,
and
had already done an IP look-up to establish you were accessing from
telewest.

Encoder is running on a 2 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM, c. 4GB free disk
for virtual memory. All regular apps are now running (ZoneAlarm, Avast!,
IE, OE, TaskMan - the only thing I have learned to kill recently is the
United Devices distributed science project client as it seems to hog
200MB
of memory - even though it runs as low-priority cpu-wise). Killing it
seems to make a huge improvement in encoding (I guess as I am then
getting
access to real RAM rather than VM).

Why do you think it would buffer every two minutes? My end or yours?

Not sure if it is actual stereo either - but it is encoding two channels
rather than one at 32Kbps

The provider is AOL UK on their Silver package (1mbps upstream,
unlimited
traffic). Probably very little current local contention - might not be
that way at evening time though as my neighbours have DSL accounts too.

My aim is to provide 320*240 feeds from either my TV Capture device or
Webcam/mic combo to only a few DSL contacts over an *optimum* stream.
(Probably only one will tune in at a time).

I'll switch over to my webcam/mic on the same URL if you get the chance
to
test it too..

Thanks again for all you help (previous & current)

"Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]" <neil@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:30n3n15l047iu3c6pncq2ii1v9peo9k827@4ax.com...
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 10:32:46 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Here is the URL of my live TV feed to copy into Windows Media Player
(File,
Open URL).

http://172.202.193.98:1219/

Anyone out there have time to check it and give me feedback here on
audio
and/or video quality etc ? Should be 25fps at 282Kbps (a single client
might
get near that given my DSL limits) with 32K audio stereo.

It was me testing at 10:50 GMT+0000 and it worked fine. Initial
buffering down a 1mbps DSL was 20 seconds. The picture quality was
pretty good (though not surprising given the source ;-).

It buffered again for about 15 seconds after approx. 2 minutes and
would probably continue to do that throughout. Not a bad result
considering it's a live feed - no stuttering so you must have a
decently beefy encoding machine to do it realtime - 2.5GHz+ ?

You might get some gains by dropping to 15fps unless you're planning
on providing horse racing footage. You can then drop back the data
rate for video to say 150-180kbps.

Also you may as well drop the audio to 20kbps MONO rather than stereo.
Using both of those changes could drop your bitrate to sub-200kbps.

I couldn't tell if you were encoding it as stereo but it's a waste of
bandwidth for web TV right now - we're not getting HDTV and 5.1 which
is why I'd modify that and shave 12kbps off the stream. "Every bit
counts" when you're sending from your home DSL.

BTW which provider do you have, getting 240kbps outgoing reliably is
pretty good - telewest provide 4M/384k on the next upgrade, but that's
still not really enough for more than 2 TV streams at say 480x290 size

HTH
Cheers - Neil

Mac
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

How would I add my port to the IP that http://www.dyndns.com/ expects?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23pgQceh5FHA.884@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

Quote:

Will look into that - thanks

New WMP URL is http://172.214.231.127:1219/

TV feed is back on... kids stuff at the moment

"jjromano99" <jjromano99@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131630530.331484.161230@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] wrote:
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:51:35 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to

www.whatismyip.com will get your current address reasonably reliably,
else you want to google for "dynamic DNS" which might cost a small
amount, but will get you a resolvable DNS entry that tracks your
changing IP.

Hi there, I strongly recommend the free http://www.dyndns.com/ service
called "Dynamic DNS", it allows you to have your own permant domain
such as username.dyndns.org, which your broadband router's client might
be able to update automatically, or if that's not the case, you could
install the tiny updater client which they provide. Have been using
their services for quite sometime, and never had a problem. (only
recently, but it was due to my D-Link routers embedded updater client,
which was hogging their services, but that's off-topic).

About your streams, didn't have a chance to test them, I suppose you
are either offline, or in a different IP.

This is my first message in the group, but will we participating a bit
more. Cheers!

Javier Romano
Córdoba, ARGENTINA

Mac
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Quote:

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:51:35 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to

www.whatismyip.com will get your current address reasonably reliably,
else you want to google for "dynamic DNS" which might cost a small
amount, but will get you a resolvable DNS entry that tracks your
changing IP.

Hi there, I strongly recommend the free http://www.dyndns.com/ service
called "Dynamic DNS", it allows you to have your own permant domain
such as username.dyndns.org, which your broadband router's client might
be able to update automatically, or if that's not the case, you could
install the tiny updater client which they provide. Have been using
their services for quite sometime, and never had a problem. (only
recently, but it was due to my D-Link routers embedded updater client,
which was hogging their services, but that's off-topic).

About your streams, didn't have a chance to test them, I suppose you
are either offline, or in a different IP.

This is my first message in the group, but will we participating a bit
more. Cheers!

Javier Romano
Córdoba, ARGENTINA

jjromano99
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] wrote:

Quote:

On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:51:35 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to

www.whatismyip.com will get your current address reasonably reliably,
else you want to google for "dynamic DNS" which might cost a small
amount, but will get you a resolvable DNS entry that tracks your
changing IP.

Neil Smith [MVP Digital M
Guest

Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 9:30 pm Post subject: Re: Testing a TV feed

Dyndns just provides an IP to Name lookup. You can add your port
number to the dyndns name as if it was an IP address (because they
just provide the DNS redirection from the Dyndns name)

It's the same as if you had a web server at www.mycompany.com and you
wanted to run the web server on port 8080 instead of the usual port 80

You'd publish the web address as www.mycompany.com:8080 and it's the
same case here.

Cheers - Neil

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:16:09 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Quote:

How would I add my port to the IP that http://www.dyndns.com/ expects?

"Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:%23pgQceh5FHA.884@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Will look into that - thanks

New WMP URL is http://172.214.231.127:1219/

TV feed is back on... kids stuff at the moment

"jjromano99" <jjromano99@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131630530.331484.161230@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] wrote:
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:51:35 -0000, "Mac" <mac@nospam.com> wrote:

Also, any ideas on how to get a pseudo-permanent URL? I have a website
that
I could update with the latest URL, I suppose - but this seems a bit to

www.whatismyip.com will get your current address reasonably reliably,
else you want to google for "dynamic DNS" which might cost a small
amount, but will get you a resolvable DNS entry that tracks your
changing IP.

Hi there, I strongly recommend the free http://www.dyndns.com/ service
called "Dynamic DNS", it allows you to have your own permant domain
such as username.dyndns.org, which your broadband router's client might
be able to update automatically, or if that's not the case, you could
install the tiny updater client which they provide. Have been using
their services for quite sometime, and never had a problem. (only
recently, but it was due to my D-Link routers embedded updater client,
which was hogging their services, but that's off-topic).

About your streams, didn't have a chance to test them, I suppose you
are either offline, or in a different IP.

This is my first message in the group, but will we participating a bit
more. Cheers!

Javier Romano
Córdoba, ARGENTINA

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