The VideoLAN Forums

Hi

Im very new to this and have been messing around streaming over my wireless home network.

I would like to stream a video(wedding) over the internet on my homepage. Is this possible and is it resonably easy to do? Thanks john

The biggest issue is that most people do not have multicast ISP, especially not multicast outgoing.

(Multicast is a method that lets you send out one set of something, then as many people as want can listen to it -- it takes no more bandwidth)

So, you would be retricted to addressed mode, a case where each person connecting would use up one set of uplink bandwidth. If only one person watches a 256K video, 96K audio, stream, you use up about 350 kilobits per second. If two people wanted it, that would take 700 kilobits,...

Now, the tough part is you need to know how much bandwidth you have on your uplink. At least in the US, I get 3 megabits per second downlink, but only 400K uplink. This means that while I have enough down (toward my computer) capacity to watch this fictional video 8 times over, I only have enough Up (toward the Internet) capacity for one external person to watch it.

I could cut the video size or frame rate, whih then lets me cut the bandwidth. Maybe switch to something that fit in 128K video, 64K audio, 192K total. You could then have a total of two external people, simultaneously, watching the video/audio.

So, yes, it can be done, but it all depends on how many external people need to see it. It is pretty easy to get a decent quality outgoing stream at 350k, if there's only one remote location that needs the stream, but any more than one simultaneous viewer means you have to start cutting into the bandwidth available for each, and quality would suffer.

Thanks Mark. That was a very helpful post for beginners such as myself.
frases