Preparing for the Live Show...
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:06AM 
As you may already be aware (or not as I haven't announced it on the show yet), I'll be giving away a brand new iPad 16GB WiFi model on Friday 9th April to one lucky ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member. If everything goes to plan, I should be bringing back a spare iPad from the US following the launch day event on 3rd April.
I had a hare-brained idea to actually do a live show on the 9th April to cover some of the aspects of the iPad, perhaps answer some pre-recorded questions, and of course do a live unboxing of the prize and do prize draw live on the show. I'll record the live show and send it out as that weeks episode of ScreenCastsOnline
Yeah, great idea!!!
So I've been looking at what would be required...
I've now had some experience of talking to camera doing my YouTube video comments (although I have the luxury of doing retakes) so I may be able to muddle through for 20 minutes or so.
I've got a couple of cameras and of course, recently acquired some decent lighting. As well as the cameras I have a Matrox MX02 video capture unit which I'm hoping will enable me to capture the output of the iPad, but I can always fall back to using a video camera in close up.
Rather than just sitting at my desk, after all why make things easy, I'm going to experiment with some green screen and re-arranging the camera angles.
As far as streaming live to the internet, I'll be using Ustream - I've set up a channel called ScreenCastsOnline Live
There are two applications I'm testing to actually create the show. Both allow you to do a live TV show, with inserts, lower thirds, switch camera angles, etc. and both are extremely powerful. The two apps are BoinxTV and Wirecast.
I've already got a licence for BoinxTV from a recent Macheist and it's certainly a powerful and feature rich application. The only downside is that it won't allow me to publish to Ustream without some third party software and even then, is restricted as fair as encoding and resolution is concerned. IT still looks OK and seems to be the easiest to use.
The other application, Wirecast, would cost me $548 once I include the HDV component and seems a bit more complex to use. However, Wirecast has built in support for Ustream and appears to encode and transmit at much higher resolution. I'm not too concerned about the price, for me the end game is always about getting the best quality,
It looks like it may be possible to get BoinxTV to use the Adobe Flash Media Encoder (FMLE) to bring it up to the same quality as Wirecast, but FMLE for Mac is a closed beta and although I've applied, I've not heard back from Adobe yet.
So I'll need to make the final decision next week and do some proper testing.
By the way, if you're a ScreenCastsOnline Extra! member and want to take part in the prize draw to win the iPad, check out the members only landing page over at:
ScreenCastsOnline iPad Prize Draw
All new members and renewing members will be added into the draw automatically but existing members need to register their entry on that page. Information on how to become a member is available here.
I'll keep you posted on the blog with how things are progressing. If i'm doing any test transmissions where I need some feedback, I'll post to Twitter so feel free to follow me over there.
Just don't expect it to be as polished as Leo!
Reader Comments (5)
You should contact the guys at Boinx Software to find out whether maybe their new Beta might help you do the UStream publishing taken care off. I had an interview with Oliver Breidenbach last week and it seemed that they are working on interesting new functions for BoinxTV and maybe, just maybe, some of what they have developed already might fit your needs nicely.
As a side note (and feel free to delete this part): The interview with Mr. Breidenbach will air on the MacTopics.de Podcast this weekend, though it will be in German. Still everyone is more than welcome to join the fun.
Flying-in to NYC for the big day, Don?
I hope that Apple have made arrangements with you for this. I can't imagine you'd want to wait on queue overnight for the big day!
Theo
Don you are a gluten for punishment, up against deadlines, preparing for a trip to NY and now taking on a live show, good grief I bet you didn't work that hard when you were in your old day job!
I am honestly just waiting for the announcement you have joined the Gadget show on Five!
BTW: Are you able to tell us why your off to NY?
John
Just to follow up...
Yes, I'm in contact with the BoinxTV guys.
My NY Trip is a just a happy coincidence, something that was planned before the iPad was even announced.
Glutton for punishment? Yes, that would be me!
Gluten instead of Glutton....don't you just hate the iPhone sometimes....LOL