Public Sphere Online Conferences
About the live internet seminar.
Wrap up of the first Public Sphere seminar hosted by Senator Kate Lundy.
On The Day
We had about 25 people turn up for the event at ANU, and another 34 attend by tuning into the conference stream. The content was very engaging as we had many great presentations from people all over the IT industry, and beyond. By most all accounts the first Public Sphere online conference was a great success. It was fascinating to see how the parallel Twitter stream of messages added to the interactivity of the event.
Technical Wrap Up
The technologies chosen for the event worked as expected. We delivered two live streams by unicast RTSP using video in the MPEG-4 H.264 format. The night before the presentation, after some consultation with the Link mailing list (a cohort of professionals interested in the evolution of the internet in Australia) it became aparrent that standard computer installations might find it difficult to connect to the stream. This was because the RTSP method of delivery can be different on people's PCs, and the media player awaiting RTSP signals might not support the H.264 codec.
Nevertheless, the majority of people had enough technical ability to endure the workarounds and get the stream going. This probably won't be the case with less technical content.
RTSP uses standard TCP/IP ports for transmission, but these are not available inside many enterprise network environments. We had reports of the streams working at some agencies and corporations, and not working at others.
Of the people that could receive the streams, most said the video quality was acceptable and having multiple sources for the presentation (two cameras and the projector) made the presentation more interesting and involving. Some lamented that they were using up their monthly download quota for this event, which is an issue that needs to be recognised for future high bandwidth services. A couple of people mentioned an audio-sync issue, though I'm not sure if it was experienced by everyone. The audio setup included getting a feed from the microphones in the venue, but it became aparrent (via Twitter!) that this caused an echo.
The Sony Bluetooth microphone worked well, though the battery only lasted 90 minutes.
We attempted to use a global multicast address that had been used for an earlier application, and sent a request for confirmation of the test stream to international multicast sites. Normally, multicast is used for MPEG-2 TV transmissions and this works well. However MPEG-4 needs two ports, and it looks like we need some engineering effort at ANU and AARNet to get this working right.
Our last-minute attempts to record the stream didn't work, unfortunately. With a more powerful machine encoding the stream, it can be recorded as it is streamed.
The wireless access in the seminar room worked well, and was able to support tuning into the medium sized stream.
For Next Time
We learned a great deal about conducting this sort of event, so many thanks to everyone for dealing with the experimental nature of the conference. There are some things we can improve for next time:
Make it easier for participants to get the stream, no matter what platform they're using. Perhaps Flash streaming, a third party streaming network, or some other technology.
Better integrate the feedback/blog participation. Twitter was OK, but something more like IRC or a rolling web-chat might be better.
Get the stream on AARNet multicast, so it's easy for R&E institutions to participate.
Ensure the stream is recorded.
Use video/audio codecs that will work without extra configuration, while keeping wide platform compatibility.
Have a single website containing the event blog, text participation and streaming info.
Have a tech assistant or MC help getting people's presentation material running optimally on the lectern PC.
Perhaps have a camera operator as well as the person putting together the live stream.
Remove extraneous furniture from the podium.
George Bray
7 May 2009
The conference is now concluded. Information below for historical reference.
Medium Size Transmission (350 kbit/s) | Large Size Transmission (2000 kbit/s) |
 |  |
| Not working? The stream may take 30 seconds to start playing. Different web browsers and operating systems function differently when clicking RTSP links. If you have QuickTime installed, try the HTTP link instead. Perhaps try a different browser. If that doesn't work, copy the RTSP link and use it from within your media player software. If using the VLC Media Player, just "Open Network" and paste the URL. If using QuickTime Player, choose "Open URL". | |
Technical Information
The streams are MPEG-4 H.264 video and AAC audio. The standard RTSP ports 80 and 554 are used. The event stream is constructed and broadcast by Telestream Wirecast and relayed by Apple MacOS X Server using a 2.8Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Xserve.
Troubleshooting
If you're using Firefox, it may be configured to send RTSP links to Real Player. Real doesn't support the H.264 video in the stream, so you need to tell Firefox to use QuickTime Player for the RTSP protocol. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Register_protocol . Or just paste the link into another player.
Thanks
Incidental music provided by GhostNotes. Thanks to ANU for all the helpful people making it happen. Thanks to Apple for the loaner kit. Thanks to the DLD people for the time to provide help.
