| Author |
Message |
fizzx
Guest
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 Posted:
Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:35 am Post subject:
live streaming...am I on the right track? |
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I’ve read through a lot of media services 9 docs and think I understand, but
wanted to run this past you all to make sure I’m not missing something.
Scenario: My church has a Thursday night service that has reached 100%
capacity and there are many families that don’t come because the service
doesn’t get out until almost 9pm which is too late to keep young school kids
up. I believe many of these families would love the option of hearing the
service over the web. So I want to setup a live audio stream … I want to go
with “live” because what I’ve read says multicasting would be the best use of
our T1 and I have no idea how much demand there could be. Our auditorium
maxes out at 1100 … but our weekend attendance over 5 services averages 5000
so there are a LOT of people not coming Thursday night.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Run the house mix into a P4-2GHz-1GB ram XP box running the encoder.
Media Services 9 will run on a PowerEdge dual Xeon-3GHz-4GB ram running
Server2003 Enterprise Ed which is also functions as our terminal services
server and sharepoint.
Q: Should the encoder push to the server or should the server pull in this
scenario??
Q: Can I set the encoder to turn on and off at specific times? I only want
people to have access to the live stream during the service.
Q: What minimum bit rate would yield acceptable audio quality and keep the
size small as possible for dial up users?
Any other suggestions/recommendations?
Thanks!
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Mike M.
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Oct 28, 2004 5:03 pm Post subject:
Re: live streaming...am I on the right track? |
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I only have a comment about your multicasting scenario. Multicasting uses
UDP broadcast packets for sending the audio/video data. It is unlikely that
the internet paths many of your viewers will take provide broadcast
capability. You will probably have to go Unicast which consumes bandwidth
for each connected user.
"fizzx" <fizzx@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6F187FC3-53A6-4893-88A9-5DE6EEF65EA1@microsoft.com...
| Quote: | I've read through a lot of media services 9 docs and think I understand,
but
wanted to run this past you all to make sure I'm not missing something.
Scenario: My church has a Thursday night service that has reached 100%
capacity and there are many families that don't come because the service
doesn't get out until almost 9pm which is too late to keep young school
kids
up. I believe many of these families would love the option of hearing the
service over the web. So I want to setup a live audio stream . I want to
go
with "live" because what I've read says multicasting would be the best use
of
our T1 and I have no idea how much demand there could be. Our auditorium
maxes out at 1100 . but our weekend attendance over 5 services averages
5000
so there are a LOT of people not coming Thursday night.
Here's what I'm thinking:
Run the house mix into a P4-2GHz-1GB ram XP box running the encoder.
Media Services 9 will run on a PowerEdge dual Xeon-3GHz-4GB ram running
Server2003 Enterprise Ed which is also functions as our terminal services
server and sharepoint.
Q: Should the encoder push to the server or should the server pull in
this
scenario??
Q: Can I set the encoder to turn on and off at specific times? I only
want
people to have access to the live stream during the service.
Q: What minimum bit rate would yield acceptable audio quality and keep
the
size small as possible for dial up users?
Any other suggestions/recommendations?
Thanks!
|
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| Back to top |
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-DC-
Guest
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| Posted:
Thu Oct 28, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject:
RE: live streaming...am I on the right track? |
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|
See comments below.
"fizzx" wrote:
| Quote: | I’ve read through a lot of media services 9 docs and think I understand, but
wanted to run this past you all to make sure I’m not missing something.
Scenario: My church has a Thursday night service that has reached 100%
capacity and there are many families that don’t come because the service
doesn’t get out until almost 9pm which is too late to keep young school kids
up. I believe many of these families would love the option of hearing the
service over the web. So I want to setup a live audio stream … I want to go
with “live” because what I’ve read says multicasting would be the best use of
our T1 and I have no idea how much demand there could be. Our auditorium
maxes out at 1100 … but our weekend attendance over 5 services averages 5000
so there are a LOT of people not coming Thursday night.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Run the house mix into a P4-2GHz-1GB ram XP box running the encoder.
Media Services 9 will run on a PowerEdge dual Xeon-3GHz-4GB ram running
Server2003 Enterprise Ed which is also functions as our terminal services
server and sharepoint.
Q: Should the encoder push to the server or should the server pull in this
scenario??
|
As someone else pointed out, you won't be able to use multicast if you're
sending over the Internet. That only works for Intranet WANs. That means
you'll need total bandwidth equal to (# of users) * (encoding bitrate).
I'm not sure whether there's a big difference between pushing or pulling for
you in this scenario. I've always used Pull and then set up a publishing
point on the server. I think this is probably best for static broadcasts
that won't have a lot of configuration changes.
| Quote: | Q: Can I set the encoder to turn on and off at specific times? I only want
people to have access to the live stream during the service.
|
You could manually turn it on or off. You could also write a script to do
this based on time. I'm not sure I've seen a time control in Media Server
and I know I haven't seen one in the encoder. Might be a duration setting
you could use in a playlist file.
| Quote: | Q: What minimum bit rate would yield acceptable audio quality and keep the
size small as possible for dial up users?
|
First off, use mono and not stereo. That will cut your bandwidth in half
right there. As for bitrate, you should be able to get pretty low, say
32Kbps or even lower. You'll have to experiment and find out what sounds
best. Obviously it will need to be below 56Kbps for dialup users. And make
sure you pay attention to the volume levels during encoding.
| Quote: | Any other suggestions/recommendations?
Thanks!
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Marc [MSFT]
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Oct 29, 2004 12:06 am Post subject:
Re: live streaming...am I on the right track? |
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Hi Fizzx,
For broadcasting content over the internet it is more appropriate to run a
unicast broadcast. Multicast broadcasting is designed for intranet
networks where all of the hardware in the organization already supports
multicast broadcasting. To learn more about the differences between a
unicast broadcast and a multicast broadcast please refer to the following
article:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standard/p
roddocs/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/stan
dard/proddocs/en-us/wmserver/multicastvsunicast.asp
In regards to your question about whether or not its best to push or pull
please refer to the following article and choose the option thats best for
your organization:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/server/faq.aspx?sectio
n=NETWORKPERFORMANCEISSUES&question=NETWORKPERFORMANCEISSUES4#NAME_NETWORKPE
RFORMANCEISSUES
To learn more about starting an encode session programmatically please
refer to the following article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmencode/ht
m/samples.asp
Since youre broadcasting spoken word audio you may wish to use the
Windows Media Audio 9 Voice codec. To learn more about how to optimize low
bit rate audio streams please refer to the following article:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/OptimizingLowBi
tRate.aspx
Best Regards,
Marc [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
You assume all risk for your use. 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved. |
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fizzx
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:28 am Post subject:
RE: live streaming...am I on the right track? |
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|
Thanks for your help folks. Bummer that I can't multicast over the net :-(
I'm sure I'll be back as more questions arise.
"-DC-" wrote:
| Quote: | See comments below.
"fizzx" wrote:
I’ve read through a lot of media services 9 docs and think I understand, but
wanted to run this past you all to make sure I’m not missing something.
Scenario: My church has a Thursday night service that has reached 100%
capacity and there are many families that don’t come because the service
doesn’t get out until almost 9pm which is too late to keep young school kids
up. I believe many of these families would love the option of hearing the
service over the web. So I want to setup a live audio stream … I want to go
with “live” because what I’ve read says multicasting would be the best use of
our T1 and I have no idea how much demand there could be. Our auditorium
maxes out at 1100 … but our weekend attendance over 5 services averages 5000
so there are a LOT of people not coming Thursday night.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Run the house mix into a P4-2GHz-1GB ram XP box running the encoder.
Media Services 9 will run on a PowerEdge dual Xeon-3GHz-4GB ram running
Server2003 Enterprise Ed which is also functions as our terminal services
server and sharepoint.
Q: Should the encoder push to the server or should the server pull in this
scenario??
As someone else pointed out, you won't be able to use multicast if you're
sending over the Internet. That only works for Intranet WANs. That means
you'll need total bandwidth equal to (# of users) * (encoding bitrate).
I'm not sure whether there's a big difference between pushing or pulling for
you in this scenario. I've always used Pull and then set up a publishing
point on the server. I think this is probably best for static broadcasts
that won't have a lot of configuration changes.
Q: Can I set the encoder to turn on and off at specific times? I only want
people to have access to the live stream during the service.
You could manually turn it on or off. You could also write a script to do
this based on time. I'm not sure I've seen a time control in Media Server
and I know I haven't seen one in the encoder. Might be a duration setting
you could use in a playlist file.
Q: What minimum bit rate would yield acceptable audio quality and keep the
size small as possible for dial up users?
First off, use mono and not stereo. That will cut your bandwidth in half
right there. As for bitrate, you should be able to get pretty low, say
32Kbps or even lower. You'll have to experiment and find out what sounds
best. Obviously it will need to be below 56Kbps for dialup users. And make
sure you pay attention to the volume levels during encoding.
Any other suggestions/recommendations?
Thanks!
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