Streaming Media Services

The Computer Center maintains an experimental Streaming Media Server for use in internet multi/broadcast of conference presentations, etc. This system offers a great deal of flexibility, but also requires a considerable amount of coordination and setup. So far, we have used this facility to webcast conferences. We also have begun to experiment with delivery of training content using these facilities.

Basic Characteristics

Events can be simultaneously recorded and broadcast live on the internet
A full time producer (encoding station operator) is required for the duration of the event.
An accurate agenda is required ahead of time, and must be updated and maintained throughout the event in order to allow generation of links, filenames, etc. to be used by viewers.
Presenter's slides should also be made available on the web page. This allows viewers to follow along with the presentation. The camera-generated representation of the presenter's slides are sometimes not clear.
The Producer should generate and update an online agenda containing the data provided, and links generated during the video process. This allows viewers to find what they need. An example of this from the 2000 HEPix conference can be seen at http://www.jlab.org/hepix-hepnt/agenda.html .
Limited (experimental) license for server limits simultaneous viewers to 25.
Archiving of video for later playback consumes approximately 130MBytes/Hour -- disk quota arrangements must be made ahead of time to specify disposition of this data. In general, video data can be cached on the server for the duration of the event. Once the event is complete, this data needs to be removed from the video server, either to some offline storage (CD-R/DVD-R), or into your group's are of the central filesystem.
Video can be viewed on any system with RealPlayer (tm) software

Available WebCasts

Webcast Guides are available of current (live) and previous (archived) events.
Producer's Guide is available for designated producers.

Requesting Streaming Media Services

If you would like to requets support for WebCasting activities using Streaming Media services, please submit a video request found at http://cc.jlab.org/docs/helpdesk/VIDrequest.html.