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Broadcast Your Video on the Web

Sonic Foundry, RealNetworks, and Viewcast.com products make Webcasting easy.

By Cameron Crouch, PCWorld   

Tools unveiled this week by Sonic Foundry and RealNetworks will help you reformat and stream video on a Web server. And if you want to show off home movies, Viewcast.com now offers a software/site package for capturing and posting video. All the products made their debut at this week's Streaming Media West show here.

Flexible Streams

Desktop video file formats, such as Windows AVI, must be converted to a streaming format, like Windows ASF or RealNetworks' Real Media, for live Webcast.

"Sonic Foundry's Stream Anywhere service takes media on your computer, encodes it, and publishes it on your Web server," says Joe Eckberg, trade show technical coordinator for Sonic Foundry. The program supports both Windows Media and RealSystem G2.

Stream Anywhere first appeared as Windows On Demand Producer, codeveloped by Sonic Foundry and Microsoft. It lets you capture media directly from a camera or tape, or import media in the AVI, Apple QuickTime, MPEG-1 or MP3 formats.

The software supports multiple bit encoding; one media file can adapt to stream over your parents' 56-kilobits-per-second modem or your digital subscriber line. Its editing tools let you "clean up the media or add a graphic watermark," Eckberg says.

The $199 Stream Anywhere is available for download at Sonic Foundry's site.

Streaming Upgrades

As Microsoft pushes broadband with its Windows Media, RealNetworks is announcing upgrades to its broadcasting tool for the RealAudio and RealVideo formats.

RealProducer converts AVI, Quicktime, MPEG-1, and audio files to RealVideo and RealAudio for play on the RealPlayer G2 or RealPlayer 7. It does not support Windows Media. Beta versions of the free RealProducer 7.0 Basic and the $149 RealProducer 7.0 Plus are on RealNetworks' site.

"RealProducer 7.0 Basic introduces you to streaming and lets you stream at 28 kbps and 56 kbps in RealNetworks Surestream," says Patrick Boyle, a product manager at RealNetworks. You need to use the Plus version for DSL or T1 support, however. RealProducer 7.0 Plus also has better audio/video quality and a bandwidth simulator so you can preview your video at different speeds.

RealProducer 7.0 can encode and publish short video clips on your site. But "if you have more than 3 minutes of video, a Web server isn't great," Boyle says. He recommends using a RealServer--free for broadcasts of up to 25 users--or a hosting site.

Simple Posting Service

Viewcast.com's Your Video On the Web, a basic service, can help you capture video and stream it on the Web.

Available for $99, Your Video On the Web includes an Osprey-50 video capture card (unnecessary if you have a USB port) and bundles RealProducer, RealPlayer G2, and MGI VideoWave Editor. You also get 5MB of storage on Viewcast.com's site.

"After you create content and put it on the Web at the host site, you can send an e-mail with an icon that viewers can click to see your clip," says Sam Sealana, Viewcast.com's technology director.

Members each get a video library listing their videos and storage capacity.