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Webcam in the studio and on website.

M

mbrg

The topic of installing a studio webcam is floating again at my stations. A morning jock even brought in his own laptop and is using Yahoo Messenger/Rocketmail during his show so he can claim the novelty.

To do it better, and so we can have it for other dayparts, we are looking at running a consumer brand webcam on a dedicated computer, then just using a 3rd party free-hosting site and embedding their "live' html somewhere on a webpage of ours. No audio of course.

I'm trying it this weekend (ustream.tv). Seems to work okay. I can't help but think I'm missing something. The studio will need a bit better lighting and the cam should be up high, on a wall?

What is the advantage to an every 20-30 second capture frame sent to an FTP site vs "live".

And is it me, or are there less studio webcams now than a couple years ago?

Thanks much, all. And if theres a better board on this site for this topic, or a source of info, I apologize in advance and will move it there.
 
Are you planning on just video or audio too? I would be very careful as if you put your station audio on the video feed you may open your station up to additional music royalty fees - I would opt for just the mic channel of the board, if at all.

A dedicated computer sounds like the best idea as I have first hand experience with somebody trying to share resources with their on-air automation. As you can imagine, it ended up taking the automation off-air a multitude of times until they figured out the video camera was taking way too much processor time and resources.

The several frames a minute via FTP may be viewed as "cute" but perhaps not enough to capture a web surfer's (or station listener's) interest. A video feed is much more conducive to grabbing and holding a viewer.
 
Perhaps hardware or software like that that used for security systems. It senses movement and could switch to an "we're away from the studio" video source when there's nobody in the studio or they've fallen asleep.
 
Thanks to all...

Yes, we'd mute the audio.

I found that this provider I'm testing, ustream.tv, has manual Start/Stop Broadcast and Record Broadcast buttons. I'm suggesting to the announcers they Start Brodcast at the beginning of the show, then Record broadcast here n' there when they have a guest or are otherwise performing and Stop Broadcast at the end of show, THEN choose to playback those recorded segments after show and rest of day. Theres an option to add text to the different streams as well (You're watching Bozo Live! Go to 97.3 to Listen) (Now Playing Best of Bozo)

Its all handled on their server...
 
techie2 said:
mbrg said:
And is it me, or are there less studio webcams now than a couple years ago?
Click to expand...

Probably because an empty studio isn't that interesting to look at.
Click to expand...

LOL!! Yeah, point the camera at the automation computer!!

Kind regards,
David
 
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