Using google slides to create the content for a condo community channel

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CuriousDude

New Member
Hello,

I would like to use OBS to support a community channel for the condo complex I live in. The ISP for the condo complex has requested that we use OBS for the community channel. The source of the content for the community channel is google slides. So we would create the slide presentation with the desired content and have it play the presentation over and over again, unitl we stop it because we have changed the content.
Google slides has the ability to publish a presentation to the internet. Users can view the presentation by put the link for the published presentation in a web browser. So does OBS have a input that would accept the published link from google slides?
 
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AaronD

Active Member
CuriousDude said:
Google slides has the ability to publish a presentation to the internet. Users can view the presentation by put the link for the published presentation in a web browser.
Click to expand...
Sounds like Google Slides does everything you need already. What's OBS for?
 
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AaronD

Active Member
CuriousDude said:
OBS is what the ISP (Internet Service Provider) wants owners to use for determining the content of the community channel for the Condominium complex.
Click to expand...
I still don't see the point. Are you streaming a live screenshot of a PowerPoint presentation? OBS can do that, but why not just link directly to the PPT? Same workflow for the viewers, right? Click a link, see slideshow?

This has some pretty strong XY vibes to it. What are you actually trying to do?

XY problem - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
C

CuriousDude

New Member
Hello,

The ISP (Internet Service Provider) has a community channel for the condo complex, they told us that we need to use OBS, it is that simple.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
CuriousDude said:
...community channel...
Click to expand...
You never said what that is. Does it show up on people's TV's, same as the local news or a sitcom? Is it a website like YouTube? Something else?

There are LOTS of different people on here, all of which have different definitions for everything. You can't just use what you think is a standard term without giving enough context to define all of those terms.

Assuming that it *is* a TV channel, and a computer is not involved at the receiving end (could be wrong), then yes, OBS can stream a video screenshot of...anything, really. But that's kind of a Rube-Goldberg way to do things if you have other options. Hence the XY question that you haven't really answered.

For example, if OBS ends up creating a physical video signal that then connects to a distribution box of some kind, then you could cut out a LOT of complexity and related headaches by having the slideshow do that directly, without OBS.
 
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CuriousDude

New Member
ok, i got it, the community channel is just another "television channel"/"TV station" on the television channel lineup. So if you are interested in watching NBC, you select the "television channel"/"TV station" to see the content. The same goes for selecting the "television channel"/"TV station" to see the weather.
The "community channel"/"TV station" is just another "channel" that appears in your listing of the channels that appear on your televison. The intent of the community channel is to allow people to get information about what is going on at the condo complex by wathcing a slide show about various things/events/etc going on at the condo complex.
I hope this answers you question.
 
koala

koala

Active Member
Since your TV provider recommended OBS, it seems it has a streaming ingest server like a streaming provider, so you can stream a live video to the TV provider, which then broadcasts it to your channel.
To display a Google slide, create a browser source in OBS and display the slide in a loop with it. In case the slide doesn't display in the browser source, you can instead capture a standalone browser such as Chrome or Firefox, capture this browser with a window source.

Configure your TV provider as streaming service (you need the URL and streaming key from your provider) and start streaming this.

For getting familiar with OBS, also see:

OBS Studio Overview Guide | OBS

OBS Knowledge Base. An extensive overview of OBS Studio and all it's main features
obsproject.com obsproject.com

Quick Start Guide | OBS

OBS Knowledge Base. A quick introduction to OBS Studio that guides you towards creating your first stream or recording!
obsproject.com obsproject.com

After you got this to work, you can start making this more automated, since OBS is an interactive streaming client, and as soon as you terminate it, reboot the machine or stop the stream, the TV channel is stopped as well.
The first optimization is to create a video from the slide instead of directly displaying the slide. Then stream the created video instead of the slide. This is an optimization, because it's less error prone to stream a pre-created video instead of a browser source.
The second optimization is to get rid of OBS and stream with a non-interactive app, so it can start automatically on machine reboot. Ffmpeg is a command line tool that is ideal for taking a video file as input and stream it to some streaming service.
 
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AaronD

Active Member
CuriousDude said:
ok, i got it, the community channel is just another "television channel"/"TV station" on the television channel lineup. So if you are interested in watching NBC, you select the "television channel"/"TV station" to see the content. The same goes for selecting the "television channel"/"TV station" to see the weather.
The "community channel"/"TV station" is just another "channel" that appears in your listing of the channels that appear on your televison. The intent of the community channel is to allow people to get information about what is going on at the condo complex by wathcing a slide show about various things/events/etc going on at the condo complex.
I hope this answers you question.
Click to expand...
Thanks for confirming the delivery method, but it leaves another important question unanswered, to which koala and I provided two different and mutually-incompatible possibilities:

koala said:
Since your TV provider recommended OBS, it seems it has a streaming ingest server like a streaming provider, so you can stream a live video to the TV provider, which then broadcasts it to your channel.
...

Configure your TV provider as streaming service (you need the URL and streaming key from your provider) and start streaming this.
Click to expand...
This is like streaming to YouTube, except the URL is different that you tell OBS to send it to.

AaronD said:
...if OBS ends up creating a physical video signal that then connects to a distribution box of some kind, then you could cut out a LOT of complexity and related headaches by having the slideshow do that directly, without OBS.
Click to expand...
This is like a local TV studio, except that the OBS computer replaces a live camera.

---

Again, what are you *actually doing*? In *all* of its detail.

XY problem - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

If you don't know something, then say that. Don't make us ask 20 Questions just to get the basics.

I'm also curious of:
  • Did the ISP recommend OBS because it knows something you're not telling us, part of which is above in this post?
  • Or is it just something that a manager found and thought looked good, with no actual experience at all?
 
C

CuriousDude

New Member
Hello,

Here is some more info on the Community Televison channel for the whole condo complex that has 146 units with anywhere from 1 to 3 televisions in each unit. The interest in getting a community channel started 2 weeks ago, so we are all learning about the various options to provide the content. So there will be alot of questions.
The content of the community channel will initially consist of the using google slides for the following information
  • Meetings/info from the Board of Directors
  • Social Events at the condo complex
  • Notifications of Hurricanes, power failures, water outages, etc
  • General info that would be helpful to all residents
Using a television channel is the easiest and quickest way to reach of the residents (owners, renters, guests) in the condo complex. Not everyone checks Email constantly, or sees a posting on the bulletin boards in the mail room, but everyone watches TV sometimes during the day.
There is also a very wide range of technical skills at the condo complex, most of the owners are retired, and many do not have technical skills. I was a test engineer for the US Navy, I will also miss the things I worked on, you can categorize me as a tech nerd, who likes technology. However I want to spend my retirement camping with my wife and dog, walking my dog and get back to flying helicopters. So I have volunteered to work on the community television channel so I would like something quick and easy, that is also easy for others to do.
So lets define the XY stuff, I am not involved in a complete system design where tasks can be defined to be where ever we want them to be,
  • X is defined as the ISP (Internet Service Provider), who has told us we can use a video encoder or OBS. Directly getting the published link from the computer running slides is not an option, maybe I should ask.
  • Y is defined as myself and one maybe 2 more people I am working with. Everyone involved in this needs to understand how it works to actually be able get the TV channel going.
So, there is another condo development in the area that is using OBS, we will try to visit them. Thanks for your responses! Have a great day!
 
A

AaronD

Active Member
You may not know yet, but it still makes a big difference whether you're:
  • Streaming to a server that then feeds the TV system
    OR
  • Putting a video signal directly into the TV system
Those are completely different things.

Personally, I'd see if I could get the direct video signal option, just to get rid of the lossy streaming encoder if nothing else:
  • Streaming lossy takes a LOT of work for the streaming computer to figure out what detail to throw away and how to describe what's left. Most casual-use computers can't do that, or at least, not very well. You need something that can sustain a good amount of processing power indefinitely. (take a good look at cooling, in addition to the actual specs...)
  • Streaming lossless takes a LOT of data to brute-force describe everything.
A dedicated physical video cord gets rid of both problems. It handles that amount of data easily.

If you do use a physical video signal, not a network stream, and if it's only a slideshow, then you don't need OBS. Just run the slideshow full-screen on whatever cheap machine you happen to have, and there you are!

If you're actually producing a real TV show, then you'll want OBS or whatever else for its live production tools, but for just a slideshow, it's overkill.
 
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