1Mbps upload solutions for streaming videos

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Pada

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Hi,

I'm looking for Internet options that would allow the church that I'm at to stream live videos, and we require at least 800kbps of actual throughput (1Mbps ADSL upload speed).
We won't need more than 10GB cap per month, and it would mostly be after hours (Sundays).

Currently we have a Telkom VPN solution, which is very expensive. We also have an unstable 6Mbps ADSL connection, which I've already downgraded to 2Mbps and it remains unstable, even with the line attenuation being 40dB! It is a Netgear DG834GUv5 modem that we're using, but I've also tried my own D-Link DSL-2500U and it gave the same SNR margins pretty much. I've tried both ADSL2+ and G.Dmt, and G.Dmt works better.

I wanted to look at something like Fishbone (line bonding by VOX), but I have no idea how much that will cost? Bonding 2x 1Mbps ADSL lines (1Mbps down + 512kbps up) would probably be enough, unless the bonding has too much of an overhead.

A 1Mbps SDSL connection would also work, but again I have no idea of how much it will cost.

Off-topic:
Where can we get an affordable streaming host with lots of bandwidth, so that we can re-broadcast the stream to multiple churches. It doesn't necessarily have to be in South Africa, since latency isn't an issue for streaming videos. Having a local host would be a bonus for situations where Seacom goes offline.

Thanks in advance!
 
Off-topic, I wonder how much bandwidth gets sapped up by televangelists, kids streaming themselves playing video games and camwhores across the net these days...

This isn't meant so much as a jab at religious folk and their use of the internet (okay, no, actually, it is really), I'm just curious as to what the usage must look like.
 
Pada said:
Off-topic:
Where can we get an affordable streaming host with lots of bandwidth, so that we can re-broadcast the stream to multiple churches. It doesn't necessarily have to be in South Africa, since latency isn't an issue for streaming videos. Having a local host would be a bonus for situations where Seacom goes offline.
Click to expand...
Actually - latency is a big issue. Not because of the delay in the stream but because of TCP windowing.

If there is too much latency between the client and the server then you will often have trouble getting the data stream to flow at the full speed of your line. It is usually impossible to solve this without your own server and custom software.
 
ambo:
Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it if guys with more network knowledge gives info, even if it wasn't something I wanted to hear ;)

We're already streaming from Bloemfontein to Canada without any issues, so I can't see that we'll have a problem with the TCP Window size if we use like Amazon EC2 as a streaming hub...

We are however trying to get a constant bitrate going, which should help a lot with the TCP Windowing, I'd guess.
 
Last edited:
Pada said:
Hi,

I'm looking for Internet options that would allow the church that I'm at to stream live videos, and we require at least 800kbps of actual throughput (1Mbps ADSL upload speed).
We won't need more than 10GB cap per month, and it would mostly be after hours (Sundays).

Currently we have a Telkom VPN solution, which is very expensive. We also have an unstable 6Mbps ADSL connection, which I've already downgraded to 2Mbps and it remains unstable, even with the line attenuation being 40dB! It is a Netgear DG834GUv5 modem that we're using, but I've also tried my own D-Link DSL-2500U and it gave the same SNR margins pretty much. I've tried both ADSL2+ and G.Dmt, and G.Dmt works better.

I wanted to look at something like Fishbone (line bonding by VOX), but I have no idea how much that will cost? Bonding 2x 1Mbps ADSL lines (1Mbps down + 512kbps up) would probably be enough, unless the bonding has too much of an overhead.

A 1Mbps SDSL connection would also work, but again I have no idea of how much it will cost.

Off-topic:
Where can we get an affordable streaming host with lots of bandwidth, so that we can re-broadcast the stream to multiple churches. It doesn't necessarily have to be in South Africa, since latency isn't an issue for streaming videos. Having a local host would be a bonus for situations where Seacom goes offline.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Also have a look at Altech Technology Concepts channel bonding. Very similar to fishbone, but sometimes it just works better.
 
What about looking rather at better compression technology and utilizing uni/multi cast settings. I'm in the CCTV field and we use h.264 video encoders and via a browser are able to stream realtime CIF res video over 512K up DSL connections
 
@Qwikslver:
Do you have any idea on how much it would cost to bond 2x 1Mbps ADSL lines with ATC? Their website is awful.

----

OFF TOPIC:

@xplicet:
Thanks xplicet. We're already using the H.264 video codec with a bitrate varying between 384-512kbps. Currently we're using VLC to stream the videos, and the amount of stuff that you can configure is very limited - like you can't define how regular the I-frames must be sent, and if the bitrate should vary or be constant. If I have time, I would love to try something else, like FFmpeg server even. I haven't found any other streaming servers yet.

I would love to use multicast, but I have no idea on how that works and which Internet connections would support joining that multicast group.

Currently we're using like the following VLC streaming settings:
Code: 
:sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=384,fps=25,scale=0.5,acodec=mp3,ab=96,channels=1,samplerate=44100}:http{mux=ts,dst=:3000/} :no-sout-rtp-sap :no-sout-standard-sap :ttl=1 :sout-keep
That translates to:
Video codec being H.264 with a bitrate of 384kbps and a framerate of 25fps, where the video's width & height is also scaled down with a factor of 2
The audio codec is MP3 with a bitrate of 96kbps in mono, at a sampling rate of 44.1kHz
For the network transport, we're using HTTP with the TS muxer.​

Here are the list of streaming features for VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/streaming-features.html
 
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@Stevie G:
We're using VLC as the streaming server, because we don't know of anything better.

I don't see anything about CoreAVC being able to serve a video stream, and neither for XBMC.

VLC can make use of hardware acceleration to playback the videos, just like CoreAVC, but the playback has never been the issue.
 
i see

goodluck with your streaming issues man. looks like your problem is the dslam. can they not put you guys on a different exchange maybe.
 
justin.tv + xsplit + low settings, you can probably make do with 70KBps upload speed..
 
Hi Pada,

We're busy doing the same at our church and I was wondering what you've learned through your experience. We currently stream Audio and Slides. Audio quality is fine during the sermon, but suffers during praise and worship. We currently run on a DSL line so are also limited by the the Upload speed. We did consider getting Telkom LTE which has very high upload speeds, but don't want to rush be tied down by a contract. We also plan on streaming Video which will increase our data requirement making LTE expensive. Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards,

Werner
 
I don't know much about this, but is it not possible to use a "buffer" on the stream so the other churches just get a delayed feed. Basically a 10 minute delay (Depends how long the sermon or whatever is being filmed so that it will only catch up towards the end) Or is this not possible?

Basically uploading your video to a server and they can start streaming from there at a set time. I guess it is a bit complicated.
Anyway, like I said, I have no damn idea about this stuff.
 
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