Ustream is a WEB 2.0 Site which allows anybody with a webcam and microphone to have a live video for others to watch and it does this this by means of you sending your Audio / Video to a central server and others connect to that server thus allowing a person with a normal home broadband connection to broadcast a show to many.
There has been a lot of changes at Ustream of late, so I will be using this post to review what it does, how it does it and the pro’s and con’s of the chosen path – this will allow you to see if it suits your needs.
The Stream as other see it
The page is broken down into The show Title and the person who is hosting – the title can change to highlight what the show is about (like Twitter). The Video itself has various controls such as “Refresh”, Pause, Menu, Volume Control and Full Screen mode. There used to be “Detach” which broke the video into a separate small browser window – this seems to have gone. On the right of the video can be Chat, Twitter (as Ustream feel people might want to chat via Twitter instead) or if the host chooses – none of these. We shall talk more about the Chat in one second though…
We now see there is adverts for current live shows along with Adverts by the bucket load. The adverts are placed on the video stream and on the Ustream page and get very annoying but you better get used to them as they need to make money somehow.
Your Own Stream – Design
You can design the page layout but they have cut back from before, there is no “Banner” – they have restricted you to a show Logo (small Square), the section you ant your show to appear in, tags in case people search by keyword and a description box which as you can see can include HTML Code – many people use this to embed a alternative chat instead of the Ustream Version.
Design – Advanced
The advanced Section allows you to disable chat, put a password ont he stream (if you wanted it to be private), the Twitter part and you will see there a XML file you can download if you wanted a higher quality streaming via FME.
Broadcasting – Using the Web Browser
When you press the big BROADCAST Button – a pop out smaller web page comes up and this is the broadcasting console. You can choose to broadcast Video, what Device to use and the Video quality – the higher the better picture BUT uses more upload bandwidth. The Audio setting much the same and if you press advanced you have the choice up the “Frames per second” to a max it seems of 23. I personally found that changing the FPS made no difference to the stream – even when I set it down to 2 it was still doing 25 FPS.
There is a a Broadcast Button (go Live) and Start Recording if you wish to store the show you are making. You can choose to monitor Local (what you see), Server (what your Viewers are seeing) or none – your choice. There WILL be some delay between what you do and say and what your Viewers are seeing – this makes sense as it has to send the video to the main server and get re-transmitted back to your viewers but they will not be aware of this lag too much. It can happen quite often somebody says something in chat though and takes a while for the host to make mention of this – chat is in real time, video is not.
Recordings
When you record what you have been streaming, it takes a while for it to come up in your page for other people to view and ustream have now added a feature for people to make “highlights” of your recordings – say when you swore like a trooper for example. You can send the recording to YouTube but you will notice the Quality will be very bad – much worse then you remember it been. The best solution if you wanted to also post your videos on Youtube is to record separate from Ustream and send it that way, makes for a better quality video.
There is no way to upload your own media or from Youtube and it does not play now when the channel is off-line – so when you are off-line – the channel does nothing unlike before were it at least played your old recordings
Chat Server
Ustream run a cut down version of a IRC Server which means you can connect via any IRC client to the chat server and chat that way instead of having to chat via the browser rather limited chat and also have more control over the channel (kicking, Banning and so forth). Before Ustream used to allow you to switch the inbuilt chat to a different irc server of choice which gave you the host better control such as WyldRyde and many others. Ustream have now restricted there in-built chat to there own IRC Server – this means if you want another – you will have to disable the in-built chat, Embed another web page one (Such as Mibbit) or instruct your viewers were to go such as a “Live” page. Many people are not happy with this move and moved to different services all because of this – I agree fully, I hate Web based chat clients.
Higher Quality streaming
When you broadcast via the web page – you stream at 320×240 with a low (200-300) upload but you can choose to use “Flash Media Encoder” which allows you to stream at 640×480 with 500 or higher – depending on your upload. Streams who go this route have a much better picture due to the increased data rate and resolution but can be demanding on your connection. Remember most ISP’s will throttle your connection if you upload too much and streaming at 500K will soon eat this up.
Categories
One of the complaints I had before was that unless you were listed in the Top slots – nobody would ever now you were every streaming and was hard to get included in the right sections – I did make a post about this on there forum. They now have the option for you to best choose your own section and now people can find you if you are live. This very method in fact allowed me to find streams which have been going for some time yet had no viewers. My thoughts now are that the more established show will feel left out and if they dont have the content, the smaller shows can rise to the top as long as they do a good job.
I tested this theory out (people finding shows) by broadcasting briefly and sure enough – had people in chat in next to no time – so I am happy they have chosen this method.
Conclusion and thoughts
I am not happy with the high amount of adverts both on there page and on the stream and the lack of ability for me to specify my own chat server and how technology is a sub section.No restrictions for Bandwidth (such as limited to 500K) or how many times you record something. I am not sure how long they can run on pure adverts and they bring in more restrivtive / paid for services soon.
