Recently Dreamhost has started to cut out on us during broadcasts. Until we get those problems worked out with Dreamhost, we have been using Ustream.tv and it has worked great.

In this discussion, we will cover how we at the ROC do our “live” broadcasts on ROCWired.com. Now, there are easier and cheaper ways of doing a live broadcast on the internet, but the quality of these and the control you have over those broadcasts are very limited.

First of all, the equipment and software used (Please note that this method of online broadcasting assumes that you have a Apple Computer):

  • An account on Dreamhost.com
    The main benefit of having an account on Dreamhost is that they have a free Quicktime Streaming Server that comes with your account. This is normally a very expensive service that is usually only in the “Server” version of OS X.
    Dreamhost is actually a very cheap service and gives you HUGE amounts of server space and bandwidth a month. Here is the current pricing:

  • Quicktime Broadcaster
    Quicktime Broadcaster is a surprisingly free and powerful piece of software from Apple.
  • Quicktime Pro
    Its a $30 upgrade from the standard Quicktime Player that you get with your Mac
  • A digital camcorder
    We actually use 4 Sony PD 170s (that are now discontinued) linked together running through a DV Cam and a Video Mixer, but you can actually use anything from a high-priced HD Camera all the way down to your built in iSight camera at the top of your iMac.
  • ADVC-110 Canopus Advanced Digital video converter.
    This piece of equipment costs us about $300 but there are cheaper versions of it out there by different companies. Basically what it does is takes the RCA (the Red, Yellow, and White) cables from the camera and converts them into a Firewire cable which then goes into your Mac.
    We got this at the Apple Store (which is the cause of the high price)
  • A Mac (can be any Mac from the lowly Mac Mini to a high end Mac Pro)

Okay, the how-to:

  1. Open Quicktime Broadcast and click the “Network” tab


  2. Select “Manual Unicast”


  3. Enter your streaming server address. It has to be the IP address of your QuickTime/Darwin streaming server.


    You can get this information by logging into your “Web Panel” in Dreamhost. Here is a how to get there once you are in your “Web Panel”:


  4. You need to change the default audio/video ports shown (if it doesn’t work, add 5 or 10 or more to the numbers.


  5. Click “Broadcast” and it will start broadcasting


  6. Then go to “File” in the Finder Bar, choose Export > SDP and save it with filename.sdp. Be creative with the name as this will be the files someone would use in Quicktime or iTunes via direct link. Something easy would be “ROClive.sdp”


  7. Upload the .sdp file to your streaming server. You do this by WebFTP or using a FTP program of your own. Make sure that you upload it to your streamingserver.yourdomainname.com

  8. Next, open Quicktime Pro, choose the File menu and select “Open URL”. Then put in the URL of the file you uploaded in Step 7. This should be rtsp://streaming.yourdomainname.com/streaming.yourdomainname.com/filename.sdp. You should now see what you are broadcasting with your broadcaster.


  9. If you see your broadcast, choose File > Save As and save it as a “Reference Movie”. Something like filename.mov


  10. Upload this file to your main webserver and you can embed or link to the .mov file like any normal Quicktime movie.

  11. To go about embedding the live stream via Quicktime within a webpage, you’ll need to first get the script from this site. And then, here is the code that we use on our site

    12. <script src="http://www.yourdomainname.com/AC_QuickTime.js" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
    QT_WriteOBJECT('http://yourdomainname.com/filename.mov','320','256','',
    'target','quicktimeplayer',
    'type','image/x-quicktime',
    'controller','true',
    'autoplay','true');
    </script>

You should now have a fully functional live broadcast of your service.