Ideas about streaming school events?

[sidewinder]

For some reason, some events in our hall can no longer accomodate as many people, so they have to be put in another room.

 

SMT want a way to be able to video and stream events so that any networked PC could watch and listen in - so potentially, the people that cant fit in the hall could watch on a projector.

 

The problem I forsee are webcams not being good enough audio and video quality, so what camera could be used? Also the deputy head would like something that could be permanently mounted on the ceiling or underneath the existing projector

Anything suitable for this purpose?? Cost not too much of a problem, though obviously spending thousands on it would be a bit silly

 

Also then how to stream it. Software or a dedicated networked camera? If software then what software? My experiments in the past trying to stream with VLC have been less than successful. Need something reliable and something that would stream watchable video

[SteveBentley]

We had such a situation a little while ago where we were expecting more people to turn up for a public lecture than our lecture theatre could accommodate.

 

Solution we came up with was to use a video/audio over Cat5 extender and patch a network point in the room where the action was taking place directly into a suitable point in the overspill room. Then we were able to feed a camcorder directly to a projector in the other room. This meant there was no delay to deal with and no issues with network performance, buffering etc.

 

We went a step further and borrowed a vision mixer from the media dept and used that to superimpose the laptop TV out in the corner of the the camcorder output so that the slides were clearly legible. Using one of those small DVD players that has a TV-input on it, I was able to have a feed of the mixer output so I could see where the overlaid graphics were and frame my shots accordingly, rather than using the camcorder's viewfinder/screen.

 

You could probably mount a dome type CCTV camera under the projector, but I think a camcorder with a competent operator following the action will give much more acceptable results in the overspill room than a fixed wide shot.

[SYNACK]

If you want it software based so it can be thrown out to multiple networked machines using just a link on your intranet and the preinstalled Windows media player you can use the free Windows Media Streaming services in Windows Server. You have a semidecent cammera hooked up with its output piped to the server which encodes it and streams it for you.

 

There is a good guide here:

http://www.broomeshs.wa.edu.au/downloads/Windows2003StreamingMediaServices.doc

Windows Media Services

ycChew » Installing and setup a Windows Media Server in Windows 2003 Server

 

You may need to use some gear like AV over ethernet to get the signal to your server and then a capture card to digitize it from AV depending on the cammera involved and how far away the server is.

[Sylv3r]

We used the Windows streaming server to project a Year 7 intake evening into the dining hall as an overflow area.

 

We used a standard camcorder on a tripod at the back of the hall connected to a laptop via firewire.

 

Then we streamed onto our 42" Plasma screens in the dining hall for parents to watch. They was a 5 - 10 second delay but it was fine.

 

For sound we setup an additonal amp in the dining hall and used radio mics.

[laserblazer]

I took the AV output of a camcorder to a video sender transmitter and connected the receiver to a projector and amp. It worked very well but keep clear of microwave ovens. Range is limited to around 50m but that was fine for us.