So a couple of weeks back we had the honour of live streaming of Ran8adidas (the 8th year anniversary celebrations of Ranoadidas.com) at the International Convention Center (ICC). We share with you how we managed to get mobile video in the field with the ability to add overlays and mix the audio source with any audio source while at the same time live streaming and recording it.
WebCamera for iOS (US$2.99) running on an iPod Touch or iPhone to act as video and audio sources out in the field
Mobiola WebCamera (free) on the streaming computer to retrieve video and audio from the iOS device (they show up as webcam video and microphone audio devices)
3G modem used as an Internet connection
OS X’s Internet sharing to ensure the iOS device and the computer are on the same network
MacBook Pro line-in port to receive sound from the mixer
A USB sound card to be used as audio out for monitoring
Soundflower was used as extra audio devices to aid the transfer of audio from audio sources to audio outputs
LadioCast (free) for audio mixer/switching between mixer and iOS device audio
uStream.tv (free) to stream and record the live video and audio
Other notes:
The video quality wasn’t great and it was a trade-off between faster frame rates vs better image quality and resolution which were limited factors of the WebCamera application (192×144 vs 480×360, but I’m not sure to measure the frame rate). We decided on better image quality as it would be made worse by the spotty 3G connection
We tried using uStream Producer (free) but it was inconsistent as it dropped after 30 seconds. I wonder if this could be due to the 3G reception.
If you have an Android device you can use IP WebCam (free) to stream the video and audio from the device to a computer. I used 2 different instances of VLC (free) to play the video and audio. The video could then be captured using CamTwist and the audio controlled with LadioCast
We experimented with PocketCam for iOS ($4.99) paried together with the PocketControl (free) client software but the delay in video and audio was too great, ~10 seconds.