Conference where audience views

[chksolic]

:)

Scenario - how do you have a web conference with a large hearing and seeing audience?

There are two clients.

There are two clients from two areas of the world. They have planned to be involved in a video conference. Prior publicity to the conference means that the audience level will be huge, making this conference WORLD FAMOUS. Everybody will want to be in on this conference. It will make a huge difference to many peoples' lives.

In order for an audience to exist there must be some online chat room. And in order to have a conference, there must be a webcam and sound utility.

This exists on microsoft and yahoo messengers right? So there's no problem.

Here is the catch - I know that on microsoft and yahoo, it's possible to have a video conference, have people watch it and everything. However, if there is to be a successful audience viewing, how is it possible to have them HEAR it as well as see it on the webcam? Of course, a large audience cannot participate in the discussion. There would be too much noise...

How can the audience HEAR the conversation, without being able to speak themselves?

1Audience must be able to view both clients.
2Audience must be able to hear both clients.

3Audience does not participate. (voice or webcam)

Is there any free program that is able to cover these three points?

Perhaps the audience wouldn't be too bad anyway. Speaker is Monk.

Any ideas? ;)


:thumbup:

[tom9933]

While my solution isn’t free it’s relatively simple and is done all the time with great success. Both clients are involved in a standard video conference that also includes a third silent participant. That third participant is sent to one or more (multiple bitrates and potentially multiple formats) streaming encoders. So the two clients have a standard video conference and then the large audio views the stream. If you want to provide a way for the large audience to interact, setup a chat room or bulletin board. Then have a moderator in the chat room relay questions to the clients. To do this on a large scale would be expensive because you would potentially need a huge amount of streaming capacity.
As with everything try this in a small setting first and then scale it up if you like the results.

[chksolic]

Thanks Tom. I have some questions.

I need to know what software is used.

How does the third participant see both clients?

Could the chat room just be in yahoo, with the video conference with other software?

Okay, thanks. :bandit:

[tom9933]

If we are talking about doing this with traditional video conferencing then each client would need either a hardware or software based H.323 compatible client. On the PC you can use something like Polycom PVX (they offer a free 5 minute demo version). You then also need an MCU (multipoint control unit) to bridge the call. In that bridged call everyone can see and hear everyone else. The third client can be one of two options:
1. A direct streaming appliance like the Starbak VCG, Codian IPVCR or Tandberg Streaming server. The advantage here is simplicity as these boxes will internally convert the H.323 traffic to a stream that standard streaming clients can view.
2. A hardware codec with a streaming encoder hooked to the output of the codec.
The streaming encoder and server software you use would be dependent on the type of stream you want to offer. Since you are talking about a very large potential audience I would recommend outsourcing the streaming sever component to a service provider. BTW you can also contract out the MCU and streaming encoder portion of the operation to several conferencing providers as well. Realistically unless you wish to do this all the time, farming out as much as possible is probably the best option.
Conceptually this is very simple, but it requires a lot of bandwidth, hardware and software to be successful.

[Kevin]

You then also need an MCU (multipoint control unit) to bridge the call. In that bridged call everyone can see and hear everyone else. The third client can be one of two options:
1. A direct streaming appliance like the Starbak VCG, Codian IPVCR or Tandberg Streaming server. The advantage here is simplicity as these boxes will internally convert the H.323 traffic to a stream that standard streaming clients can view.
The Codian MCU can stream without the use of any other equipment.
Kev

[tom9933]

Good point, I had just assumed that since they were asking about software that there wasn’t enough money to buy a bridge. I’m also assuming that with a large audience that they will need to spread the streaming load out over several locations or have a huge amount of bandwidth. Hopefully they post again will clarify his situation a bit :)

BTW just for my own info what is the limit on unicast streaming clients from the MCU? Also can it be increased by adding a dedicated streaming server?

[VideoMan]

the 2 options provided earlier are perfect.But since you are evalating all kinds of options there is a slight modification in the same.

As guided in the earlier option,have a silent endpoint seeing both the participants through an MCU.Feed the output of the silent participant(codec) to a video capture card (i think that should be cheaper than having an encoder)instead of an encoder which would convert it into MPEG-1 or MPEG-2.Build up a Windows Media Streaming Server on the same(should find it on the microsoft site) and link this stream to the Server and stream it out across to everyone.

This would be a crude way of doing it though.Correct me guys if i am wrong.