Component: Video casting

[yarikoptic]

Largely inspired by overview of pros/cons of crowdcast (see #2) for needs to fulfill. Here concentrating on video casting aspect ATM.

Desired features

• scale to few thousands of recepients (dedicated CDN setup, ideally with auto-scaling etc)
• integrate with interactive features (Q&A Feature: Q&A #11 , chat Chat alternative setup #4 )
• allow for different sources of 'audio video' input:
  • video file (pre-recorded video)
  • mix-in of (possibly multiple) presenters (talk, panel discussions etc) with support for screen sharing. So pretty much from Feature: Video "chat" #12
• recording and export to other casing platforms (e.g. youtube), most likely also just need to be done for Feature: Video "chat" #12

References:

• jitsi + hack https://community.jitsi.org/t/how-do-i-change-youtube-live-stream-to-another-rtmp-server-url/24817/46 to cast to other than YouTube rtmp casting server/service
• Custom setup of debconf: https://debconf-video-team.pages.debian.net/docs/index.html and USB installer setup for video mixing etc . Distribution of content via a bunch of (cheap!) Digital Ocean VMs. Some stats for debconf20 could be found on 8th minute slide within closing ceremony video: 1481 unique watchers, 251 simultaneous (I guess max)
• FOSDEM! Similarly to debconf - everything is based on open tech, was always a "hybrid" (description of video capturing setups), many parallel tracks, videos are publicly archived. It is larger than DebConf, (crazy crazy and good, I even managed to attend FOSDEM 2020). Setup details: https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible .Told by Debian-video people that it is similar to Debconf.

Notes about debconf setup scalability

dump from IRC question

13:05   yoh_: re debconf2020 video casting: So about 1.4k visitors, and ~250 max watchers 
              at any given moment.  Do you think the setup would scale (given more CDN 
              servers deployed) seamlessly to 1-3k simultaneous watchers?
13:08   pollo: yoh_: yes, the load on the streaming frontends wasn't that high
13:08   olasd: we've hit some surprising nginx-rtmp behaviors (mirrored streams dropping 
               off and not recovering until a nginx restart) that would need 
               investigation before adding more CDN servers; but in general, yeah, 
               several 1000s simultaneous watchers shouldn't be a problem
13:09   olasd: CCC and fosdem use a similar setup with these kinds of numbers without an 
               issue, AFAIK

[yarikoptic]

OBS was suggested in #2 (comment) . I love OBS, and it might come handy for establishing some advanced and flexible video/audio mixing, and casting into broadcast solution. Could be a part for live video recording/casting setup of real sessions in hybrid conference setting, or to prepare lecture videos etc.

[patcon]

Streamlabs is a platform company that has forked OBS and makes it much more user-friendly. They offer value-adds, but you can choose not to engage with their offerings, in which case it's just some great software:

• https://streamlabs.com/streamlabs-obs
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.streamlabs&hl=en_US
• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/streamlabs-stream-live/id1294578643

edit by @yarikoptic: Windows only, sources on github

[markvdb]

@yarikoptic , you emailed us asking about the FOSDEM setup. https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible has the code. It evolves with every edition, but basic components until now:

• custom built video ingestion boxes
• voctomix plus a simple web frontend (a use the original authors never imagined)
• (until FOSDEM 2019) nginx-rtmp

For FOSDEM 2021, we're currently exploring a different setup more adapted to a virtual conference.

[yarikoptic]

Great -- thank you @markvdb ! I will "watch" that repository, any other medium I could "sign up" for to be a listener/reader for the "exploration"?

[patcon]

@yarikoptic sorry, just realized your previous edit to my comment. I'm using it on Mac rn, so it's windows and Mac :) I think their website just customizes the call-to-action depending on your OS, which may have misled you.

(I def don't mind my comments being edited in practice, but in hindsight (which is always clearer heh) a comment would have allowed me to notice and correct sooner)

[yarikoptic]

Hi @patcon, Thank you for following up. In these issues I was trying to avoid commenting to not make it difficult to sift through comments for useful information later on. I have added "Windows only" because their website says "Free Win" only (I am coming from Linux), and github's README says "This application currently only supports 64-bit Windows." and "Currently only Windows x64 packaging is supported".