I apologize in advance if this is not the appropriate venue for this type of question, as I didn't see a topic that was a "slam dunk" for it. I am involved in planning a 50-year reunion for my high school class. As class members are approaching 70 yo, there are a few who will not be able to travel to the event due to medical conditions. I am exploring options to include them in the live event via video and audio streaming over the web. Some provision for (limited) interactivity as compared to one-direction streaming from the event room to remote viewers would be a big plus. Since this is a one-time event, cost is obviously a concern. Is this a task that would be appropriate to attempt using a combination of OBS and Facebook (or other social connection hub?) Has anyone here done anything very similar? Live attendees will probably be on the order of 100 - 150, remote attendees perhaps 12 - 20. Where can I find some use cases that I can examine to determine what would be required in terms of video and computer equipment and bandwidth? If there are resources that I can peruse to get most of my answers, please feel free to direct me to them in lieu of unnecessary or inappropriate forum discussion. Thanks.
Question / Help Is OBS suitable for streaming to remote event attendees?
- Thread starter SAMIAM
- Start date
Sapiens
Forum Moderator
I'm not sure what kind of interaction would be possible outside of chat, but something like YouTube or Facebook seems like a good fit for this type of event. Do you know what kind of PC hardware will be available for the task? Things like CPU make/model, available upstream bandwidth, etc. would be good to know.
Yes, using OBS to stream to facebook is entirely possible and probably a reasonable solution provided your venue has a decent internet connection. You may want to test this multiple times between now and the day of. A guide for streaming to Facebook is available at http://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-stream-to-facebook-live.391/
If you want to be able to talk to people at the venue via video, that's a little harder. You're adding a large amount of additional bandwidth necessary, and that may be too much for wherever the reunion is being held. Something like skype might be possible, but definitely not for 12-20 people. A group chat on facebook would be better. Perhaps you could dedicate someone at the event to personally interact with them, and maybe also include a person using Periscope (https://www.periscope.tv/) from their phone but again that requires decent bandwith or for the person to use their data.
As far as hardware, you'd need a mid level desktop computer with either a usb webcam (with a microphone) or a digital video camera and a compatible capture card. Or you could use a higher tier laptop with a usb camera.
What hardware do you have available?
If you want to be able to talk to people at the venue via video, that's a little harder. You're adding a large amount of additional bandwidth necessary, and that may be too much for wherever the reunion is being held. Something like skype might be possible, but definitely not for 12-20 people. A group chat on facebook would be better. Perhaps you could dedicate someone at the event to personally interact with them, and maybe also include a person using Periscope (https://www.periscope.tv/) from their phone but again that requires decent bandwith or for the person to use their data.
As far as hardware, you'd need a mid level desktop computer with either a usb webcam (with a microphone) or a digital video camera and a compatible capture card. Or you could use a higher tier laptop with a usb camera.
What hardware do you have available?
Great answers so far. Thanks! I will check that link as soon as I post this reply.I do know that available bandwidth from the site will almost certainly be the most critical single resource. Regarding on-site computer equipment, thanks to 38 years in IT I have enough "stuff" lying around here to put together at least two mid to high level desktop systems, and I am capable of filling in any missing hardware items for cheap, so that isn't much of a concern. I had a couple of additional things in mind, don't know how feasible they are. Ideally, I would like to have one good quality camera mounted high in the ballroom where the event is to occur, so that the remote viewers can have a good overview, and a second camera in traditional web cam mode at the local computer. I also did anticipate that having all of the remote participants interactive at the same time would be an issue, I thought it might be possible to switch between them either periodically or on demand, allowing celebrants at the physical site to "stop by" the local computer and 'say "Hello"' to one or more of the remote attendees. I'm pretty sure I can find a way to switch between two web cams at will, not so sure how well the "conferencing" software piece would react to the switch. I also think that (if necessary) it should be possible to have two applications (or even two computers) for the streaming overview (high camera) and interactive conferencing (intimate camera) functions, given sufficient available bandwidth. Obviously, it would be necessary to instruct the remote participants on how to switch between the two applications on their computers as well. One of the things I'm hoping to find out here is what I should expect when these grand idea smack head-first into harsh reality :)
Did more research. I need the broadcast event to be restricted to authenticated viewers. That seems to rule out Facebook Live, etc., because a Facebook Page is required for publication, and according to FB, with the exception of some very crude controls for audience age & type segregation, Pages are forced to be completely public. I looked at Twitch because it is the successor service to justintv, which seemed to be very well targeted to my use case. Unfortunately, by design Twitch seems to be at least as "promiscuous" as FB live feed (so far as I can tell, Twitch seems to have made researching specific aspects of their service deliberately difficult, which is usually not a good sign.) I' now looking at Google Hangouts! (or whatever it might be called currently) as there does seem to be some reasonable provisions for audience restrictions. Is OBS still a good candidate to use in conjunction with that service? Also, I seem to be finding that a camera with HDMI output is required for adequate results on most publishing services, and many of those are beyond my budget. Is there a document on this site that identifies low-budget cameras that can be used for this purpose? The cheapest HDMI-out cameras I have identified seem to be sports-oriented - GoPro, cl;ones, and competitors. While some of those seem to have the basic specifications required, I'm wondering what the real world trade-offs would be. Finally, I have pretty well decided that I should separate the live streaming of the event from the face-to-face communications aspect, and do the latter with something like TeamViewer free, probably from a different computer. Any thoughts on that? Thanks again for any suggestions you can provide!
Sorry I took so long to get back to you. To be honest, I don't think that OBS is the best solution for you in this case. A primary example is that OBS is not capable of outputting as a webcam to Skype or hangouts. However, if you get dedicated webcam, you will be able to output to Hangouts if you want to. If you have a couple computers each with their own webcam for the random person to stroll up and chat with their classmates that could not attend, and perhaps a computer with a webcam to capture any presentations/crowd views you want, then that should suit you.
There are RTMP solutions (ex https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-rtmp-server-using-nginx.50/) you could try to implement on your own server, but to by honest i know absolutely nothing at all about and you might be better served by joining the IRC (https://obsproject.com/chat) for some semi-live assistance as far as that goes.
There are RTMP solutions (ex https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-rtmp-server-using-nginx.50/) you could try to implement on your own server, but to by honest i know absolutely nothing at all about and you might be better served by joining the IRC (https://obsproject.com/chat) for some semi-live assistance as far as that goes.