Live streaming video...what would it take?

[FOBSIDE]

I don't know what I need to accomplish this task. Please feel free to give me any suggestions and please give me pricing as well. I want to take a video of a wedding and be able to stream it to family members and friends that cannot attend the wedding because they are out of the country. I am not sure about the number of individuals that will be watching this. Here is what I am thinking.

Camera -> laptop --(some kind of conmpression on the fly)--> server with fat bandwidth -> clients

The part in bold is the part I am not sure how to do, if this is even a plausible solution.

We have a camera with firewire out. Would some type of streaming camera work better?
What kind of laptop power would I need? It could possibly be a tower too if a laptop doesn't have enough power.
What software would be used to do on the fly compression? What format would it end up in for streaming?
The T1 should be in place already to serve.

Assuming the T1 and camera are already in place, what is the cost of this?

 

[stardust]

add: VIVO or All in Wonder

 

[mkivotaku]

I use Windows Media Encoder 7, it allows for live broadcast in WMV formats, you pick the bitrates, fps etc.
i hook my digital camera to computer using firewire, and then run windows media encoder, set up a live broadcast, pick a port #, and broadcast away!
to access the stream all someone has to do is type http://ipaddress: Port of the stream
but using this method, you would stream from the laptop directly, not to a server and then to the clients, i would think you need lots of power for this if you want to broadcast to a lot of people, heres the link to download
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/wm7/encoder.aspx
BTW its all free =)

 

[FOBSIDE]

Originally posted by: mkivotaku
I use Windows Media Encoder 7, it allows for live broadcast in WMV formats, you pick the bitrates, fps etc.
i hook my digital camera to computer using firewire, and then run windows media encoder, set up a live broadcast, pick a port #, and broadcast away!
to access the stream all someone has to do is type http://ipaddress: Port of the stream
but using this method, you would stream from the laptop directly, not to a server and then to the clients, i would think you need lots of power for this if you want to broadcast to a lot of people, heres the link to download
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/wm7/encoder.aspx
BTW its all free =)

So you use a normal DV camera and the software automatically encodes it to a certain bit rate? Can I only choose one bitrate if I have one camera? I would want to transfer it to the server, in real time if possible, so that it can be served off the T1, so since my server isn't the machine receiving the file from the camera, it's not exactly real time.