Live Channel Free
By Fabian Westerwelle
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Manufacturer: Channelstorm
Price: Free Channelstorm
Specifications:
Power Macintosh G3 and up (preferable G4)
Mac OS 9.0.4 or later (not for MacOS X)
At least 64 Megabytes of RAM
QuickTime version 4.1.2 (version 5 recommended)
Any ATI Rage graphics card
Carbon Lib 1.1 to 1.3.1.
Infrastructure Requirements:
Dedicated network access (e.g. Ethernet LAN, ISDN, DSL, cable modem, T1/T3 connection); the faster, the better.
A fixed IP address (i.e. 999.222.33.8) supplied by your Internet Service Provider or network administrator.
Note: If you a running on a network that uses dynamic IP addressing, you will need to look in your TCP/IP control panel or Apple System Profiler (Apple Menu) under networking, to determine the IP address assigned to you at the time of broadcast. Your viewers will need to be notified each time the IP address changes.
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Live Channel Free, is the free versions of Live Channel which is basically a TV studio on your Mac. With it you can easily broadcast video and audio live over the internet while you produce it. The only limit in the free version is that you can only broadcast to up to 5 different people.
Installation:
Installation is a real breeze with Live Channel, all you do is download the .sit file and unstuff it. It doesn't install any plug-ins or extensions that you don't really need, which I liked, and the app itself doesn't even take a lot of hardrive space, only 1.2MB.
Usage:
Using Live Channel is pretty easy too, I learned it in about 15 minutes. The interface is made up of 12 windows. The Media Browser, this is where you store your media files that you have imported; Two Video clip windows, two video input windows, an audio input window, an audio clip window, an overlay window, a title window, the main broadcast window, a transitions window, and an information window. You basicaly use all these windows to put together the broadcast.
Just select what you want to broadcast and press one of the transition buttons. There are eleven transitions from which you can choose: Wipe, Slide, Push, Venetian Blinds, Soft Wipe, Zoom, Stretch, Radial Wipe, Star Iris, Checkerboard, and Random Blocks.
Before you can broadcast anything, you first have to import all the multimedia files you need over the import feature in the File menu. You can import most file types, such as MP3, WAV, Mov, Doing this is easy but here is the problem: The imported files can get up to 3 times as big as the original file. That can eat up your hardrive like nothing, if you have big videos. I hope this is one of the things they will try to improve in the next version of Live Channel.
After you import all your files, setting Live Channel up for a broadcast is not too hard. First you have to go to Settings.. in the Broadcast menu, and choose your video and audio settings. Then you have to choose "Announce broadcast" in the Broadcast menu. This will create a small reference file to your broadcast, which you can embed on a website or send to someone over e-mail.
The last preparation for broadcasting is the set up of your multimedia. First set up all your cameras and microphones, and select them in the video, audio source windows. Now drag all your video and audio clips from the Media Browser onto each of the windows. Then select each of the clips, mic, or video camera you want to show first by clicking on the next button in each of the windows. Now you are ready to broadcast. Just select broadcast from the Broadcast drop-down menu. When you want to transition into the video and audio you have selected before, press the play button on each of the clips and hit one of the transition buttons. Now your clip will be shown live.
A great feature in Live Channel Free is it's presentation mode. This allows you to present media in a separate frame, while you broadcast. You can present any type of media that your browser supports, such as images, movies, animation, text, and html. For example if you were talking about your wedding video, you could present it right beside your streaming broadcast, in a separate frame, so that every one could see the video in full quality. You do this by uploading all the media files you want to present during the broadcast onto your website server, and creating a small page with two frames. One frame with the live video stream, and one that will display the media you want to present. Now while you broadcast you can choose one of the files you have uploaded and present them right beside your video at any time.
Watching the broadcast seems pretty easy. I mean all the user has to do is hit the play button on an embedded movie, and the stream should start playing. But at my first attempt the stream didn't play. After I thought about why it didn't work, I figured out that Live Channel streams video and audio only over SMTP, and not over HTML. So I went to my quicktime settings, and noticed that I had my settings on HTML, I just switched it to SMTP and all was good.
Problems:
The main problem with Live Channel Free are the imported files, which can get up to 3 times the size of the original, eating up lots of hardrive space. Also twice while I was broadcasting and I was working on other apps at the same time, the transitions refused to work, so I had to restart the application and also the broadcast.
Conclusion:
This is a great application for small broadcasts over the Internet, for example for small websites, or families showing off their home videos. Since it only support 5 people watching at the same time, it is not usable for high scale broadcasting such as the maybe the MacWorld Keynote. If you want this kind of big scale broadcasting you should look into getting the full version of Live Channel.
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Pros: | Cons: |
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It's Free!
It's very easy to use.
No need for extra hardware.
Is comatible with most Quicktime USB and Firewire video cameras
Small size of the app itself.
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Big imported file sizes
Refuses to transition sometimes while broadcasting
It's non colapsable
Only 5 people can watch at a time.
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Rating: 9 out of ten Mac Faces.
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