[streaming] streaming

[Ronald Marsh, Ph.D.]

I am part of a team from the University of North Dakota that has undertaken 
the task of webcasting streaming videos of astronomical events. We have 
webcasted the Venus transit (June 2004) from India and the Oct. 2004 lunar 
eclipse from the U.S. We are planning to webcast the April 2005 solar 
eclipse from Costa Rica as well. To date, we have used Macromedia's system, 
but due to license restrictions (200 logins), bandwidth limitations and a 
very small budget we have decided that this is not the way to go. 
Furthermore, we had 130,000+ hits on our last webcast and we expect 500,000+ 
hits on the Costa Rica webcast. So we are now considering using Videolan and 
I was wondering if you had any suggestions for someone new at having to 
manage/configure such a system by themselves? For example:

1. Should I pursue multicasting? What are the chances this will reach 
viewers all over the world? Of course this is assuming I can get the stream 
off campus in the first place.

2. Or would I be better off using HTTP via a webserver (I am assuming that 
is the intent of the HTTP protocol - I haven't tried this yet because the 
Linux version of VLC doesn't seem to support it). I expect this will GREATLY 
increase the bandwidth consumption, but I may be able to "send" the signal 
to mirror sites and have them serve it to the public.

Any suggests you have to offer will be greatly appreciated. Should Videolan 
work we will continue to use it (for all future webcasts) and give credit to 
your group on our website.

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Ron Marsh, Ph.D.                                            |
| Assistant Professor  rmarsh at cs.und.edu             |
| Computer Science              www.cs.und.edu/~rmarsh        |
| University of North Dakota                                  |
| Grand Forks, North Dakota                                   |
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