MosaicExampleSetup

Example set-up for a conference

Problem description

For a conference we needed a web stream for participants who were not able to come. The set-up needed to be flexible as well transportable, since the conference took place at two venues which were several hundred meters apart. VLC was chosen because there was already a somehow working set-up available which was modified for this conference.

Hardware

We were using a dual-core AMD box (Athlon X2 4600+) with 1 GB of memory and only two PCI slots (Fujitsu Siemens PC). So nothing out of the ordinary. We had two PolyCom remote controllable cameras which can output SVIDEO signals which we feed into to BT878 based grabber cards.

Software

We used the vlc version coming with Ubuntu Gutsy 0.8.6c along with xawtv for direct control of the cameras (the encoding process and buffering of the clients usually introduce a lag of a few seconds which makes it hard to steer the camera efficiently.

Network distribution

One of our problems was that at one of the conference venues the network bandwidth was somehow limited and we feared to overload that network. We thus decided to stream only to a single dedicated box which is connected to a network with a much larger bandwidth. This box was restreaming the content to anyone interested.

More to come