LIve stream across the school

[msi_school]

I think this has been addressed before her but I can't find a link.

 

Our new parents evening is coming up and we don't have a room large enough for them all to see the Head's presentation, so I have been asked to stream it to one or more extra rooms. I have asked if it possible to have the head do more than one presentation and if we can get an external company in to either do the stream or come in in advance and make a film we can show but these options apparently will not work.

 

Does any on have any pointers on how to achieve a good result, I can just stick a camera in the back of the theatre and stream the whole stage but I have never seen this look good in practise especially as the head will be using a power point presentation on an unstretched cyc not a proper screen.

 

Thanks

[Danp]

YouTube is your friend. That's how we have done it in the past. Live stream from one device and camera and show it on another device and screen elsewhere. It will give you a download afterwards. You can set the YouTube permissions to only stream to those with the link, i.e. you and not Joe Public.

[robyholmes]

Office 365 Stream might be worth looking at.

[TheLion]

Did this a lot at a university I used to be at. We used YouTube, set it private when just for internal but we sometimes streamed live.

 

We used OBS to stream to YouTube, you can make it look like a well polished production. Worked perfectly. Don't run it on that 8 year old laptop, as to encode it uses a fair amount of CPU depending on bitrate, fps and resolution.

 

https://obsproject.com

[mavhc]

VLC will do LAN streaming pretty easily, no need to upload and download again

[msi_school]

Thank you all for your advice.

 

It turns out that we don't have any cameras that will frame the shot adequately so I am currently looking into camera hire as well now. I suppose I can't complain I have been given a couple of weeks notice not the normal couple of minutes.

[bald_pig]

Thank you all for your advice.

 

It turns out that we don't have any cameras that will frame the shot adequately so I am currently looking into camera hire as well now. I suppose I can't complain I have been given a couple of weeks notice not the normal couple of minutes.

 

Not got a DSLR you can borrow from photography?

 

For this kind of thing I'd use OBS, free and open source, and you can quite easily add multiple sources for the camera feed, presentation, and adding school crests etc.

[mavhc]

Sound will be a harder problem than video. Even if you give people microphones will they use them?

[bald_pig]

Sound will be a harder problem than video. Even if you give people microphones will they use them?

 

I've never seen a parents evening presentation that didn't have a proper microphone setup on the lecturn. If anything, sound would be easier because 99% of the time there is an existing audio setup being used during a presentation.

[msi_school]

We have a lapel mic for the head a stand mic for other speakers, a couple of ambient mics and a theatre tech to control them, so sound should be a non issue (if you have jinxed me @mavhc I will probably cry)

 

I am currently having trouble getting anything to stream across the network I have tried OBS and VLC and they are not connecting. I was blaming the ACLs on the VLANs but it is not working in the same VLAN so I am scratching my head at the moment, I am going to try this at home on my PCs which are far less locked down to see it is just a restriction on the school network I am not allowing for.

 

As for DSLRs I have two problems, the camera positions are too far away for the lenses we have so I cant frame the shot properly and they turn off after half an hour as I just want to set this up before anyone comes in and leave it this is not ideal.

[TechMonkey]

Another vote for OBSProject, I have used it in anger for a live streaming event, but did not need sound. You will need to be able to feed the sound from your mics into the PC that is streaming. As for Cameras, we used a couple of basic Hikvision IP cameras.

 

You could make it look fancy and create some custom graphics to brand the feed and put the heads name and position up, you know as you have the luxury of weeks!!

[mavhc]

Can you ping? TCP connect test with telnet? Is the broadcast software listening on the correct interface?

[SamanthaD]

I had a play with a product called Switcher Studio a while back, allows you to use iPhones / iPads as cameras. Thinking instead of using pro grade cameras with long reach lenses from a distance, could a less obstructive iPhone be placed closer (much closer - on the lectern itself even) to the Head?

 

I think it also allows screen casting, so for the stream I'd do a picture in picture instead of the wide shot you're looking at, PowerPoint full screen with the video of the presenter PiP'd into a corner. Of course you can change this as you go so as not to cover the points you're talking about. 14 day free trial so might be worth having a play?