Steve TV

Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 13th June, 2006 @ 20:12

QuickTime Broadcaster + Darwin Streaming Server = Cool

Earlier today Richard bothered me about wanting to get a party he's having on Friday broadcast live on his website. I didn't dare ask what kind of party it would be or if he'd be charging his website visitors to view the feed.

Anyway, it led me to recall I'd previously installed Darwin Streaming Server (DSS) from Apple on my server in the US. The trouble with hosting a web cam of course is that you need to provide the bandwidth of the video stream times the number of viewers. Which isn't very practical on an asymmetrical broadband connection. Using Apple's QuickTime Broadcaster it is possible to send the webcam stream to a server running DSS and have your users stream from there.

I'd tried this before, hence the DSS install on my server, but never succeeded. I'm not sure why it didn't work, but fresh perspective and a few months between tries and I managed to get it functioning pretty much within half an hour on the second attempt or there abouts. So Richard is happily running his cam.

And not to be outdone, I've decided to set up my own so that he can tell that I'm actually sitting at my desk at 1am doing some work :)

Thus, I present to you, Steve TV.