In my Continued review of each of the Web Streaming services offering anybody armed with a webcam and a microphone to host there very own show, I now turn my attention to Mogulus – This looks different from most of the others on offer and has a more professional feel to it – which we shall see.
The Show Page
You will notice that Mogulus does not brand the video on the top right like Ustream for example and the adverts don’t see as frequent as most of the other services and you have the ability to show either a normal size video or a lareg (right across the page) version – esp good for FME Broadcasting. When the Video is of the Smaller size – the Chat box sits on the right while the larger version has the chat underneath.
Configuring your Channel
Starting from the left on the many options you can set, Full name of Show, Channel Logo, Profile (which can inlude HTML Code), Description, Banner, Tags and Category. Next to this we have Style Channel
This page is mainly for the Text / Graphic Overlay which can be used for a Description maybe or the Presenters name / subject along with moving logo and so forth. There is a 3rd Tab which allows you to manage & Add extra people (Producers) so you can have other people log in and allow you to switch to them – like someone Live on location for example.
Manage Library
This is the main Storage Area of both clips you have recorded and one’s you can bring in from YouTube and other places. You can create folders and put whatever into each of these such as YOUTUBE, Recording, Reviews and so forth. This forms the basis of the other tabs later on. To bring in a YouTube Clip, You can search right on the menu as above and it brings the video across and stores it on Mogulus.
Broadcast Live
This forms the main Console of the live production – you get to see any Feeds on the left (You, FME, Procaster, Other Presenters) and a StoryBoard for stored Clips from the other menu. Bascially to give a good example of this amazing feature:
You can cue up yourself and begin the broadcast, you switch to another presenter either in the same room or in fact anywhere in the world and then cue in a clip you have previously done – say a review of a new Mouse and finally back to you to finish this off. You Could record this entire lot and it will play over and over.
You get to Broadcast from the Web Browser as above, Flash Media Encoder or ProCaster – the max setting as a FREE User is 500k – this should be good enough for most but it is something to bear in mind if you have higher and want to push out more than 500k on FME.
AutoPilot
One thing that sets Mogulus aside form the others is the ability to set up a collection of Videos, either recorded, Clps or both and for them to play over and over. What this means is that anytime somebody comes to your show – they have something to watch and not met with a “off-line page”. This feature alone is what I feel makes Mogulus look more professional then any of the other.
Video On Demand
This allows the viewer to choose what Video’s they want to watch, you drag and drop the clips in there – so not every single video has to be on offer, a rather good idea and closer to a TV type thing these days (Catch up).
Widgets
This allows you the broadcaster a choice to embed the player were you need and it comes with various options, some of which are only there for PRO Users (such as Branding).
Chatting
By Default the stream has a chat on the right hand side of the video and allows people to chat, the problem is it keeps the last page of chat so you both have no idea how long it was that someone came in, said Hi and left but also the fact you cannot manage the chat from that screen – you have to go to the Broadcast Live console and manage it from there which makes sense if your using the web page to broadcast but not if your using FME. Procaster has the chat built into the App BUT only comes up when you broadcast. You have the option to disable chat or stop people from speaking. You can use this “Disabled”Chat function to Put in there info you might want people to know such as IRC Server or Live Pages.
Pro Options
As you can see – $350 a month for One channel is quite a bit of money – this is aimed at more professional outfits maybe. On the Free Account, you are restricted to Max 500K and so forth (along with Adverts) but still more then usable.
Conclusion
The many options on the settings can make it look very complicated and indeed it seem that most don;t like Mogulus and prefer maybe the simpler Ustream but if you take all the options, personally I feel this is the better one. When I had some technical issues – ben from the forums (admin) was only to happy to help – so on support it wins hands down.
