Introduction

So, yesterday, the regular Jhack crew set-up an event with Richard Stallman to talk and exchange around the issues involving Free Software and Human rights.

And, as we want to build and keep history (also, it was a week day, so some people can’t come physically to the nice place we’ve had for the occasion), we wanted to stream.

When it come to streaming something, it usually sum-ups to having a cam, connected to a laptop of a sort and which then send it over a more or less closed source application. Everything ending on the web in a flash player (website like Bambuser or Ustream are doing a great job to broadcast video from revolutions, but I cannot see the video there for I have no flash, please people, think HTML5 now, also this is why [TBS][] uses HTML5 and not a flash player).

And I do not wanted that. There might be a way to do it, without using the horrible command line tool gstreamer (I cried tears of blood last time I wanted to use it).

Also, I was surrounded by apple products (Journalists, changes your habits! I cannot works like that anymore), none of them being able to be used as I wanted to (meaning, just do something without Apple software). The last thing I add was a laptop with a small cam and an internal mic.

Tools of the trade

Since we were looking for a streaming solution in #opSyria, a part of the preliminary research had been made, so here are the tools that was needed to stream:

• A laptop running GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, not my favorite favor, but let’s deal with it) and with included microphone and webcam.
• VLC, because when you need to do some video/sound it is a good tool
• Network connexion. Ethernet over RJ45 with a steady bandwidth is generally a good idea.
• A server to stream to, with a good availability. My choice is Giss.tv, free streaming tool. It is based on icecast and can stream .ogg (free container)

 Assembly everything

Once you’ve find all of the above, the worst oart is done. If you have a powerful laptop, you can even record the stream locally, wasn’t needed here since we’ve got a camera crew working on it.

1. Plug your computer into the network, start it and launch VLC.
2. Visit Giss.tv and create a channel for your need. They will send you all the needed informtion for you to stream.
3. In VLC go in File > Stream, choose your physical device (nowadays, most probably a video4linux2, the cam is ususally in /dev/video* and the sound is your ALSA card (probably :hw0.0). Click on stream
4. Check the display locally check box, extremely useful to monitor and check everything is ok. Stream to a shoutcast server, feel in the details Giss.tv has send to you.
5. You want to transcode to a set of codecs of choice (free one, my choice is Theora / Vorbis)
6. Click on Go. The streaming will start. Go on your interface page on Giss.tv and say ohai to the camera, you’re on the TV \o/

Conclusion

I had some pain to manage the network over there (not mine, they’re not used to weird people doing strange things with network) and with the CPU power needed to transcode. My good old netbook wasn’t powerful enough.

The quality was awful, due to the fact I have nothing best than internal devices. For the next time I need even a cheap jack microphone and a webcam that I could use to zoom on the subject and have better than 2.3 Mpixels.

Also, I need to plug the power cord into a power plug that is actually connected to the electrical network. I have to set this in a bit of a rush and that totally slipped of my mind.

I also need to find a way to do it from the command line. But it works. It’s dead simple and it’s free. So now, you have no excuse.

If you want a shiny design around these, just put some CSS and HTML around, and it would be enough. But get rid of Flash.