[Icecast] Basics about Videostreaming?

[Chris MacDonald]

Hi

While I've personally never done it, I believe you can follow along with 
a guide here:

http://www.oddsock.org/guides/video.php

Streaming video isn't so different from streaming music, you need a 
supported source format, a source client to arrange and send your stream 
to the distribution server and they clients connect to that. In this 
particular case Icecast only supports OGG Theora (I think...) so you'll 
first need to convert your video, the guide uses ffmpeg2theora for this 
but I think any tool would do so long as you end up with Theora. Second 
you'll need a source client capable of sending your stream to Icecast 
and in this regard the guide makes use of ezstream, this is available on 
the Icecast website. An example ezstream configuration is in the guide, 
in it you can see how ezstream is actually set up to match .avi files, 
use ffmpeg2theora to convert them then send them to Icecast.

As for compression, resolution and bandwidth requirements someone else 
will have to step in here, or you'll just have to try it and tweak it 
yourself. Try the manpage for ffmpeg2theora, in it it does appear to be 
possible to lock the video and audio bitrate in order to keep the stream 
a predictable size. I do know that 1024x768 is going to require a lot of 
bandwidth to run at a respectable frame-rate and quality. Also keep in 
mind that the conversion to Theora is happening in real-time, your 
hardware may not be able to re-encode your stream fast enough at that 
resolution. That said, I've never done this so you'll probably have to 
test the waters yourself to get a good idea of the settings you'll need.

Good Luck,

Chris

Anatol wrote:
> Hi All!
>
> I've seen, that icecast can stream videos! Great! Audiostreaming with 
> icecast is well known, but how about videostreaming? Can you tell me 
> some basics about it?
>
> - which software is required? (Icecast, ok ;) what else? - by the way: 
> my OS is a linux ;) )
> - I want to stream a live-video with 1024x768 resolution - is it 
> possible? - is it wise?
> - what a compression-rate is to use, if the output-device is a beamer 
> (1024x768) and the images should have a medium or a good quality in 
> spite of the compression
> - What a bandwidth is needed for this resolution/compression?
> - which other points are important to keep in mind?
>
> Thanks for your help!
> Anatol
>
>
>
>
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