Quicktime Broadcaster
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Murphy’s going to demonstrate how to broadcast live video from your Mac. Quicktime Broadcaster is easy to set up, yet you can use it to serve large numbers of clients simultaneously.
You can keep things simple: Connect a camera to a computer running Quicktime Broadcaster. A client computer can connect and see your live video feed using the Quicktime Player on a Mac or Windows machine.
In multicast mode multiple computers can connect to your live video. Your network must support multicasting for this to work.
If your network doesn’t support multicasting you can use the Quicktime Streaming Server or free Darwin Streaming Server. The streaming server gets the video feed from your computer running Quicktime Broadcaster and redistributes, or reflects, a stream to the clients.
Here’s a scenario:
You need to broadcast a meeting from the conference room. (or the dorm room) A couple hundred clients will be watching with Quicktime Player.
Your Darwin Streaming Server is located in a rack in some back room. Install Quicktime Broadcaster on a laptop in the conference room. Connect your camera. The Darwin server gets the feed from the laptop. Then the clients all connect to the Darwin server to get the live feed.
Again – it’s possible to have the clients connect directly to the computer running Quicktime Broadcaster, as long as the network supports multicasting.
In the screencast Murphy will show you how to set up the broadcast feed. Set your preferences and export them to a Quicktime file you can distribute to your viewers over the web or in an email. Opening the Quicktime file connects the users to the live broadcast. You can create multiple files for different bit rates. You’ve probably seen web sites with choices like this.
Check back for a screencast on using the Darwin Streaming Server.
Bonus: Darwin Streaming Server and Quicktime Broadcaster are both free. And you don’t need Quicktime Pro.
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6. April 2007 at 11:06 am :
Thanks for this tutorial. Can the Streaming Server be on a WAN and not LAN?
In other words, can Broadcaster be in the conference room and send the stream to QT SS on a Mac somewhere else in the city/country via Internet for streaming to QT clients elsewhere on the Internet ariound the world. Both Broadcaster and QT SS are on fast optical networks separated by the Internet.
Thanks,
Robert
6. April 2007 at 12:54 pm :
Definitely. In fact I’d say that’s an intended use. You take a laptop and camera to an event and send the QT Broadcast back to your data center where the Streaming Server is running. Your audience connects to the data center that has the capacity, not the laptop in the field.
6. April 2007 at 10:47 pm :
Many thanks for your confirmation of what I thought must be possible–now to make it work. I have trouble getting the stream from Broadcaster to the Mac on the WAN running QTSS. It must be a hardware firewall problem at one side but a first glance check of the settings does not explain where it is being blocked. I have tried both the default rtsp port of 554 and the option for port 80 but neither does the trick.
Has anyone else ever seen this problem?
7. April 2007 at 3:28 am :
Take a look at this document – there’s a page (24) with port information. But I don’t know how old this doc is.
http://images.apple.com/education/streamingsolution/pdf/server_cookbook.pdf
Are you trying to unicast the broadcast across a WAN to a QTSS? I’ve only ever done this to a Darwin Streaming Server. But it shouldn’t be much different.
I think the port you allowed in through your firewall is the one clients use to view the stream. The broadcaster might need to send other ports through the stream. The QT Broadcaster interface shows 5432 and 5434 on its Network tab. That document mentions others – but it could be old. I’d start with those. Are you putting the public address of the QTSS box in the sdp file?
1. June 2007 at 6:11 pm :
Do you know a Windows Version of “Quicktime Broadcaster” ? I can’t find any client for sending a live stream to the Darwin Streaming Server…
1. June 2007 at 6:24 pm :
I don’t think there is one. There might be some kind of Windows client – DSS is open source. But I don’t know of any.
31. July 2008 at 7:43 pm :
Ok. I have made a website on iweb and have a domain name through 1&1.
I have a macbook and I want to do a live webcast. is it possible and if so what do i need and how do i do it?
23. April 2009 at 12:36 am :
hey i was wondering if i could stream this on to a certain web site so i could do like live radio or something like that only i have no idea how this could be done i have all my quicktime broadcaster settings done i just need to know how to upload the .mov file i have exported to a web site i have created……. if you can help please e mail me at jkerr1@live.com!! thanks jake
4. June 2009 at 2:41 pm :
Thanks for the tutorial, I’ll be setting up a simple unicast over Wireless LAN later this week.
As for Windows, Linux, or even Mac I highly recommend VLC. The only limitation is that it cannot capture on a Mac, which is where Quicktime Broadcaster comes in. Now I just need to figure out if quicktime (client end) supports timeshifting (pausing). If not, I’ll try and figure out if I can use VLC as a client.
23. February 2010 at 1:51 pm :
Hi – can you setup a live video unicast over the internet – peer to peer without using a server?
regards
John
11. March 2012 at 3:41 am :
could you broadcast a stream out to a server say like a upstream or live stream server? if so how?