Broadcast quality video over internet

[News Active]

We are looking for a solution to send live video (propably MPEG2 stream) over internet from the field to our studio.

A local internet service provider has built a high speed WIMAX (3,5 GHz) network that covers the whole city and its suburbs and they are willing to give us a 10Mbit guaranteed connection to it.

Now we need to find either a software or a hardware card that on the field will encode the live video feed to MPEG2 (or MPEG4, H.264) and then send it over the internet to our studio where it is decoded and output to either composite or preferably SDI signal.

Remember, this is a country and city where regular microwave links are pretty much non-existent and satellite uplinking is too expensive for daily news use. Also, the culture of using live standups on daily basis hasn't really gotten here yet. And that's what we are trying to change by finding a cost-effective way to do it.


And another question. What kind of system do CNN and other networks use to get the video from BGAN satellite phone live stream to regular video signal? Do they just use a windows media player to receive the stream and then via a VGA-converter transfer it to composite video signal?

I know there are many rackmount devices that do MPEG2 encoding and decoding but we are looking for a solution that doesn't cost 10 000 euros per device.

Thanks in advance to anyone that might have useful information. :)

[Chestfever]

http://www.streambox.com/index.htm

This is a solution used by a lot of stations. I've spoken with an engineer in Seattle who uses it regularly to see their sister station in Portland. It's not cheap...about 25k.

There are cheaper alternatives...lots of options at NAB this year.

[News Active]

Thank you for your information. I also found the streambox website. It looks absolutely great but is a little too expensive for us now.

For that price we could buy a regular microwave transmitter and receiver. Almost. :)

If anyone knows another, preferably cheaper solution, please let me know.

[Flaca Productions]

quicktime broadcaster?

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/broadcaster/

[News Active]

Yes, Quicktime Broadcaster might be one option, but I'm not sure, how big delay does it generate. In live talkbacks two seconds delay starts to be a bit annoying.

And the other problem with Quicktime Broadcaster is how to decode it in the receiving end and transfer to standard PAL composite or SDI signal.

[Flaca Productions]

yeah - good question.

it does say: User-friendly interface: QuickTime Broadcaster provides a basic view that includes presets for popular broadcasting configurations, making it easy to start broadcasting in just a few clicks. Or you can customize your own settings in the expanded view and then save and share them with others.

i'm guessing that PAL is supported (just like in FCP)

EDIT - yeah. go here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/broadcaster/specs.html
on the right side, it says that DV PAL is supported.

i'd also go down this road for some answers: http://www.apple.com/support/quicktime/

my first, uneducated guess - if it works anything like fcp, on the 'receiving' computer, you'd set up an external, 2nd 'monitor' consisting of a firewire converter box. move the broadcaster full-screen display to the 2nd monitor window - (the converter) which would give you the signal thru the output of the box equivilant to the output capabilities of the box - component, composite, etc...and then into the switcher...make sense?

(in my head, its somewhat equal to setting up an external monitor in FCP...)

EDIT - they run down a basic setup here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/delivery.html

EDIT - they also suggest some partners - in your part of the world, they offer:

TeleMak is a European leader in content creation and content delivery applications and services, including live and VOD streaming. Founded in 1994, TeleMak has since built huge experience in the field of digital video and rich-media Internet broadcasting. With the recent live broadcast over the Internet of the Cannes Film Festival and other events, TeleMak has proven expertise in high profile Internet streaming for live events. Since 1999 TeleMak has been providing expert services in compression and streaming, and now provide consulting expertise for live events, wired media authoring and all forms of Internet streaming and rich media hosting.

Locations: Belgium, France, Germany , Netherlands, and Portugal

http://www.telemak.com

as for delay - not sure what that might be - can't be any worse than a double-bounce satellite shot - which is annoying, but can be worked around.

root around inside that quicktime/broadcaster site -there is a lot of info there.

[Tippster]

10mb/s is pretty crappy, IMHO, plus after the buffer and system overhead you're looking at probably 8mb/s transfer speed - and that's in the most optimal spots/connections. We won't do anything live yet via the innerweb, but do use Telestream between Bureaux & FTP for field package feeds. Not real time but also not nearly as compressed.

[Dedline]

Feeding video over the internet is one thing and done by folks already. Going live is another. We are actually looking at trying this company out to use a hardline ethernet connection since they claim to have very low latency.
http://www.vbrick.com/
Their equipment is more to be rackmounted but if you can just get it an ethernet plug from a WIMAX receiver, it shouldn't be that difficult to set up in a van or car. They also claim "DVD quality" video up to 15MB.

[bluetito]

Check out a program called Wirecast. We're fooling with it now. Seems OK. However, this could easily be done using something as simple as iChat, but the problem is bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth.....If your pipe is big enough on both ends you are fine, otherwise waste a lot of money on solutions that just get clogged along the way.

[American lost in Canada]

"The Internet is not like a truck, it is a series of tubes..."

This coming from the guy who is supposed to regulate it.