I was surprised to find Steve Jobs’ announcement of Apple’s new music service online only in Windows Media Format through MSNBC. But a few minutes later, I happened to see Jobs on CNN, so I rewound the TiVo and captured it for everyone to see.
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Can’t see BlogTV?
Click Here. |
This is an experiment in “time-to-live” BlogTV, the interview took place around 2:15, the compression is done and I’m putting this online at 3:40. It takes extra time to prepare streaming video, I could have put it online in about 15 minutes but I must make the video non-copyable in order to preserve my Fair Use rights while not getting stomped on by CNN Legal. This server is also a small experiment on a tiny DSL line so I apologize if there is insufficient bandwidth for large numbers of viewers. If you get the “Not Enough Bandwidth” error message, this means all available streams are already in use, please try again later. If you have other difficulties with the video, please leave a comment. I’d like to hear your experiences viewing the streams, that’s why I’m doing this BlogTV experiment.
I keep getting a “not enough bandwidth” message when I try to play the clip. I have a cable Internet connection! Are you just getting a lot of traffic?
Yes, I’m getting a LOT of traffic, and this server only has a 640/256 DSL line. All available streaming slots are busy pretty much all the time. If you get the “not enough bandwidth” error then please try again later.
I get a 404 message. How do you make the movie non-copyable, BTW? And is that enough to keep the legal hounds at bay?
The 404 error is the most common problem. For some solutions, click the tiny link marked “Can’t see BlogTV? Click Here” under the QuickTime window. It is usually a problem with firewalls or NAT routers that don’t pass QuickTime UDP requests. If any QT pros know some workarounds for the 404 problem, I’d sure like to hear it, I’ve struggled with it for over a year.
QuickTime Streaming Server video is naturally uncopyable, it’s a stream, not a file so there’s nothing to copy. I can only hope this is enough to prevent charges of infringement, since I am not actually distributing copies. It seems to work under Fair Use doctrine.
Hi, I’m in. But I also could not get the Jobs thing, but I was able to learn all about making egg sandwhiches, thanks to your translations.
I just watched and enjoyed the Quicktime stream. It’s 10:40PM Pacific time. I had a few failed attempts to access the stream about ten minutes ago. A couple of times the stream started and then the audio was lost. This last time though worked pretty well. There were a lot of video ‘hangs’, but the audio was mostly there. A few hiccups, but it was watchable. Thanks for posting it.
I have a slow modem but I got it anyway, but oddly enough, with no sound. Usually it’s the opposite. The sound keeps going but the picture pixelates and stalls. The video played all the way through but with only one blurb of sound.
Thanks for putting it up.
Getting “404 Not Found” error with a cable modem and Safari.
Tried it a few more times and the sound came through better although no perfectly. I just wanted to tell you that yours both looks and downloads better than Apple’s “official event” download on my connection.
Thanks for the reports, everyone, they were helpful. The load is back down near zero so the server is usually sending just one stream, so any packet loss problems are probably due to general internet conditions more than server conditions.
I tend to push the limits of encoding, there is a tradeoff between quality and bandwidth, and I always go for more quality. For example, most servers send a 112k ISDN stream at 80kb but I send it at 100kb, so if your connection isn’t so good and drops below 100kb, you can have dropouts. Perhaps I should back it down to 80kb next time, and give everyone some slack.
BTW, some older CPUs don’t keep up with the new Sorenson 3 codecs. I had one person complain their Pentium II 133 couldn’t play the videos without stuttering. I sure hope everyone has a faster machine than a P2/133!