Video Streaming Part 2

Ok ... So today I've explored video streaming in Second Life at several places. However, some locations I visited either required the owner (which I could not contact), needed money or were scheduled on some other day. Well here are some images of these places I found ...

DemandX Demo Video ...
DTV Music Video Streaming ...
LifeChurch.tv
Dell's Screening Room!

From what I've read and asked, video streaming in Second Life isn't too difficult ... in fact, it's the layer beneath putting it into Second Life that's more challenging. Anyways, the process of streaming live videos should go like this:

Firstly a source is required (duh!) which usually comes from a DV (Digital Video) camera and preferable (or perhaps a requirement) to be in Quicktime formats such as .mp4 or .mov.

Broadcasting would require a computer that sends those video signals (including the encoding process) and apparently Apple Mac OS X is very much preferred around the SL community. Also since OS X is used, Quicktime Broadcaster comes free with it which makes things much simpler. Since broadcasting is a resource hungry process it is usually recommended to be the ONLY thing the computer is doing and nothing else (not even running SL).

Next up is the streaming server which receives the data from the broadcasting machine which is eventually redistributed to viewers. Though not power hungry, it is a definite bandwidth hog especially with a request of high definition streaming over multiple viewers simultaneously (ouch! for 512k users). To keep things simple. Darwin Streaming Server seems to be favoured here and eventually a URL will be provided which can be linked to web browsers or in this case, SL.

Onto the SL part, in the land we own, we simply enter the URL in the Media tab if the About Land window and it is in SL already! Of course, a surface has to be specified to actually view the video. This is done by designating a Media texture through the same way videos are streamed in. It isn't a special texture therefore any other texture that uses the same texture will display the video. Anyway once all that is set its ready to be played! Well, with this I hope everything goes smoothly (getting an Apple computer rather than having to use multiple platforms)