With the recent launch of RAMP Video Live, I’ve been thinking a lot about Live Streaming Video. Coming from a mostly narrative background, it’s a whole new world out there, and today I’m going to share some insights I’ve gained regarding the products and applications that facilitate live video streaming. In this post I’m going to cover a fairly wide range of options, both software and hardware, with price tags ranging from free to thousands of dollars. The goal is to show you that you can stream your organizations video content live no matter what your budget may be.
Live Video Streaming Software
Flash Media Live Encoder
For those of you who are just starting out, or who are looking to test the waters without a huge investment, you can’t do any better than the Flash Media Live Encoder. The FMLE is a widely-used solution, and is perfect if you want to use a pre-existing webcam or camera setup, and one of the best features is the price: Free!
WireCast
For those of you with a slightly larger budget I highly recommend WireCast, which has become one of the industry standards for web broadcasting. With advanced features like live switching, unlimited input devices and multi format encoding, this is THE premiere software video streaming solution! For $495 for the Studio version or $995 for the Pro version, it doesn’t have to cost a lot to get truly professional features for your broadcast.
Live Video Streaming Hardware
Hauppauge StreamEez-Pro
If you’re already invested in camera gear, you may want to think about just getting an inexpensive streaming encoder, like the Hauppauge StreamEez-Pro. With studio quality H.264 encoding that accepts HDMI input, this is a great choice for using your existing camera in a streaming setup, and for $250, you can’t beat the price!
JVC GY-HM850-890
If you’d prefer to go with an all-in-one solution, try JVC’s newest offering, the GY-HM850U ProHD Shoulder Camcorder. Besides being a fully featured professional ENG camera, it features streaming directly from the camera to your Wowza server. While it’s a little pricey at about $6,500, for the quality and the features, you can’t get much better than that.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it! As you can see, the options are virtually limitless, and I barely scratched the surface of live video streaming. In future posts, I plan on going more in-depth in the techniques and technology involved with live web streaming. As a bonus, every product I talked about today is compatible with our new live video streaming app, RAMP Video Live.
Hopefully, now you have an idea of some of the possibilities that are available. Until next time!
