Quote from russraine :

Love the picture mate, thanks. Although I think 50 euros is a bit expensive, people will end up getting it from Limewire or Bittorrent at those prices.

I already told you to think about the collector value! In few years, or after your death (even a fake one will do) the prise on eBay will skyrocket!

lol, well my future children need not worry about their financial future.

OLFSLTV - Update!

Hello everyone!

I am happy to announce OLFSLtv is now viewable in a browser frame, either in FireFox, Internet Explorer or Opera. Click on OLFSLtv on the left menu <<<

You will be asked to install either a plugin (FF) or ActiveX (IE) for it to work.

IE users will probably see the yellow security bar pop up, you must allow the ActiveX to install.

FF users (ignore the green plugin symbol) click the link at the bottom, then choose to allow lfs-league to install plugins, then click the link once more to install the plugin.

Opera users, I think you have to install the plugin via Firefox first.

p.s. It is still possible to view the stream in Winamp/VLC.

p.p.s. Any problems, please post.

----Notes----
There will be a small reduction in quality, as I had to swap codecs for it to work in a browser window, but I think the positives outway the negatives in that respect. I will have the stream running a little early tomorrow, so that everyone can have time to install the plugins, unless, they wish to continue in Winamp.

I'm using Opera and don't have FF installed... What should I do? O.o

Well, I'm not exactly sure. I'm running the latest opera, and when I loaded the test stream page I was running, it worked. You'll just have to try it at around 3.30pm gmt when I put the stream on, and see. Failing that, you've always got Iexplorer, and even Winamp/VLC.

Hi everyone.

Right lots to go over.

Right it was a big technical jump this weekend, for the better or for the worse, I need to know please.

Basically, with less than 24 hours to go, I set up the stream to work on browser windows (with help from FienDi). An old coded was required, so that will explain the lower quality, what I didn't expect was the huge jump in cpu power it needed, also, double the KBps output, which considering the quality was worse, is just awful.

Anyway, it did all work, which is surprising, IE/FF/Winamp did all get the stream ok, but had reports of buffering issues, in my tests I did not have this, so, I cannot comment on if this was actually the stream, or people's connection not being high enough, or simply, the browser plugins not being good enough to cope. (I think the IE activeX is better than the FF plugin).

For reference, last time, the overal stream was going at around 300kps, this time it was more like 550. Why exactly, I do not know.

Sorry about the commentary, or lack of, just couldn't manage it today, for a number of reasons. It will be back next time, I promise.

But I did stream 4 pools of racing, without major issues, so, I am pleased with that.

So please, as much feedback as possible.

Hi

First i was going to try the new IE stream, but it didn't work, i've installed the activex thing on ie, but when the page opens with the player it does nothing, then when i click on it, it show's on the bottom of the page the small ie yellow error sign.

The winamp, start the buffering, but every 5 to 10 second's, the image went nuts, with a lot of mini squares. Maybe is my connection or codecs...don't know.

Just to feedback....and thanks for all the good work soo far.

I tried the plugin for FF, but I'm running Minefield alpha (FF 3), and it seemed to install, but had no effect (no player visible, nothing). I didn't insist and switched to Winamp.

For Winamp, I can report the same effects as Fox reported: frequent buffering and frequently lots of little white squares like croatian flag.

Solar Hydro

I watched Pool 7 in IE 7.0. Worked well, but the quality could be better (maybe its because of missing donations - i`ll look at it this week.. ).
There was sometimes a problem with the buffering. It stopped for about 10 sec. and started again. I have a Cable connection on 2048/128

I watched pool 4 using winamp for a bit & it was very blocky & patchy. It was streaming @ about 396kb/s so I would expect it to be a much more solid picture.

Anyhow it lacked commentary, which you avoided. If you dont want to do it then ask around I am sure someone would like to try. Also it buffered randomly interupting the TV for about 10secs before resuming, this happened about once a min. The quality of the music was very suspect & was of poor quality. Probably better not to have the music on top as it takes up bandwidth & slows the broadcast.

So overall quite poor IMO, I know you have spent a lot of time on this & hope this is'nt to upsetting for you & that you can iron out the blocky broadcast for next time.

Keep up the good work JR, OLFSLtv can only get better

Thanks for all your comments so far, they are needed, as, it is impossible for me to be able to tell, how "the world" see's the streams, I can do some minor testing, but as it takes the only two pc's I have to generate the stream, I cannot therefore view it like you do simultaniously, only through your feedback can I improve the service.

So from what I can tell, the buffering was far too high, and the quality far too low. I thought this could be the case, but, I thought it was worth a try, so I guess I could revert back to the previous setup, it was working very well then, as they say, if it's not broke, don't fix it.

I do think the older codec was the main problem for most of the complaints you had, and for that I apologise. Frustratingly I can't see why the newer codecs are not supported in many browsers or media players.

The problem is this - the entire process we are using is a unbelievably frugal, on-a-shoestring, it-just-works approach.

Without getting too technical, both myself and Johnathan Russ are pushing the limits of what is capable from a service of this type. It might end up that OLFSLtv is as clear and as evolved as it will ever be. Only circumstances and time will tell.

As well as the technical requirements, the personal requirements for this service are huge. But again thats something that differs from person to person.

One thing I would like to suggest to the Johnathan (I would have done it on MSN but im not on it for this fortnight) is to use the Windows Media Encoder in conjunction with a P2P streaming program.

The x264 codec was a great codec but it rely's on broadcasting software that is unstable at best and cannot be relied upon.

Windows Media Encoder is a much more stable base program for streaming and problems that arise are usually the result of problem hardware.

The problem we had last time was that dedicated windows media servers are VERY expensive, however with the advent of P2P streaming software emerging- it is a feasible option for delivering the OLFSLtv stream.

More as I read up on it.

Hi Fireball - I noticed you were on MSN less, darn, I was gonna ask you something too :-)

I have been looking into so much streaming stuff lately it's made my head hurt. I did look and download windows media 9 encoder, and yah it looks good, the Windows Media Server thing put me off the, EXPENSIVE!.

Also been looking at flash streaming, by the looks of it, but as it uses the same VP6 codec, i'm not sure if there would be any improvement, besides the fact that it would be able to be streamed in a broweser with no problems.

I looked into the cost of SDSL lines, which would've meant something like 2 meg upstream, which would, have given us 8 times the extra bandwidth to play with than is currently possible, but the cheapest I could find was £50 per month, and that was without installation fees too, but, if we got really good donations, or, started a subscription, that could work, but I doubt most people would want to pay lol, as most people don't even donate hehehe.

I've not seen much about P2P streaming, but it sounds interesting, I'll google it now matey boy!

I've just played around a bit, here is what I've discovered:

VLC is a really neat solution for this kind of tasks. I hooked up the TV-Out of my graphics card to the video input of a rather old TV-Card, and was able to capture, preprocess and encode the stream with various codecs (mpeg4, divx3, wmv2), and providing a http-stream. All on my PC, everything with one single instance of VLC.
The result was really great, although only 320x240 (limitation of my crappy TV-card), but smooth 25fps and 92kbps mono audio (mp3).
I've also tested relaying the stream on a server with higher bandwidth availability, also with VLC, which worked out fine.


I would really encourage you to give this setup a try.

That doesn't sound too different to the setup we use, what program are you using to capture and encode?

You dont mention if you are relaying to a server designed to handle many connections, you can't have 50 people downloading the stream at once on just any setup.

Quote from russraine :

That doesn't sound too different to the setup we use, what program are you using to capture and encode?

You dont mention if you are relaying to a server designed to handle many connections, you can't have 50 people downloading the stream at once on just any setup.

Valid points.

Quote from nilo :

I've just played around a bit, here is what I've discovered:

VLC is a really neat solution for this kind of tasks. I hooked up the TV-Out of my graphics card to the video input of a rather old TV-Card, and was able to capture, preprocess and encode the stream with various codecs (mpeg4, divx3, wmv2), and providing a http-stream. All on my PC, everything with one single instance of VLC.
The result was really great, although only 320x240 (limitation of my crappy TV-card), but smooth 25fps and 92kbps mono audio (mp3).
I've also tested relaying the stream on a server with higher bandwidth availability, also with VLC, which worked out fine.


I would really encourage you to give this setup a try.

That is good, but we'd be three weeks sending all racers codecs.

Let me ask OSoi (Tgrand) if he will have a lookie loo.

Can we get back to you?


Thanks for your input, it is always welcomed,

Be well.

AAnt

Quote from russraine :

That doesn't sound too different to the setup we use, what program are you using to capture and encode?

You dont mention if you are relaying to a server designed to handle many connections, you can't have 50 people downloading the stream at once on just any setup.

...speaking about donations, I'd like to donate some bandwidth if that would be of any help. The server is located in germany and has a quite-broadband connection(TM).
Maybe it makes sense to recode the stream on the server to something more compatible for most of the clients as bandwidth concern does not matter that much anymore then..
Regards and hail to the Voice, Tys

Quote from russraine :

That doesn't sound too different to the setup we use, what program are you using to capture and encode?

VLC, like I said. You don't need any other app with this setup.

Quote from russraine :

You dont mention if you are relaying to a server designed to handle many connections, you can't have 50 people downloading the stream at once on just any setup.

This server is theoretically able to handle 100 people watching with this quality. As this would cause 44GB of traffic per hour, and this server don't have any traffic inclusive, this would cause me some money.

Tys already noted that he has a server with some spare-bandwidth available?

Quote from AtomAnt :

That is good, but we'd be three weeks sending all racers codecs.

Thats not true.
First, VLC is able to play everything encoded with VLC.
If you choose for example WMV2, I think quite everyone is able to play this just with any videoplayer on windows (windows media player, for example).
If you choose any another codec (say mpeg4), they just have to install VLC (which they should do anyway, because it's the best and most compatible videoplayer out there)

Quote from nilo :

First, VLC is able to play everything encoded with VLC.
If you choose for example WMV2, I think quite everyone is able to play this just with any videoplayer on windows (windows media player, for example).
If you choose any another codec (say mpeg4), they just have to install VLC (which they should do anyway, because it's the best and most compatible videoplayer out there)

There are many good things people don't use. So if you want to address a wide audience, you have to utilise techniques that are usable by todays standards OS out of the box. That means: you can rely on windows and what comes with it.
That is very little if it comes to multimedia (Windows 2000 users are still out there, remember mplayer.exe? This horrible little piece of software...).
Maybe Flash is an alternative. VLC 0.9 should be able to encode streams as flashstream, but the builds are considered wildly unstable still:/

Thanks for the interesting posts.

Right I didn't realise VLC could encode streams and then upload them, from what I knew about it, I thought it was just a media player, but it does look as if you install the VLS add on, that it can indeed do more, thank you, I will look into this and see what I can do.

As regard to servers, we are currently renting a shoutcast server, with as I recall 500GB of bandwith a month for £11.99, which I think is a good deal. But of course a better deal is always welcome.

You don't need VLS to do that, all possible with VLC alone.

I've just discovered that vlc does also have a shoutcast output module. Although it's not documented yet, i'll try this out, too.

Quote from russraine :

As regard to servers, we are currently renting a shoutcast server, with as I recall 500GB of bandwith a month for £11.99, which I think is a good deal. But of course a better deal is always welcome.

Where you got this server from? Seems to be quite inexpensive.

VLC even can capture your screen, try the streamingwizard, use screen:// as source!
I could not test this much, so I don't know about the performance..

we use http://www.tidyhosts.com