Advice on web-streaming a talk
April 16, 2012 11:54 AM   Subscribe

Advice on the one-time web-streaming of a presentation with projected slides.

I would like to stream a presentation that I will be giving. I'm aware of some free services like Justin.tv, but unsure if it is worth paying for a service to ensure that I can offer a reasonably high-bandwidth version. I anticipate 10 to 20 viewer using the service and I would like the viewer to have the freedom to choose what resolution they desire.

I was planning to use the web-camera on my mac-book pro (I think) unless that is a bad idea and I should use something better. What would that device be and what sort of specs are necessary? The viewers won't need to see small words on my projected slides, but I would like them to get a good idea what images and large text are being displayed.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You should be able to use UStream for free, but there will be occasional ads interrupting the presentation for the viewers. Do they need to see you, or just the slides? You can use CamTwist to make you internal camera see the screen instead of its image (change "Video Sources" to "Desktop", and screencast that way. You can probably do Justin.tv the same way. If you screencast, resolution shouldn't really be an issue.
posted by brainmouse at 12:06 PM on April 16, 2012


You'll want to use a mic as well. Your macbook's built in microphone won't sound great.
posted by backwards guitar at 12:07 PM on April 16, 2012


Google+ hangouts make it pretty easy to share a screen or your web cam and flip between them. Of course, everyone who's watching has to use Google+...
posted by advicepig at 12:22 PM on April 16, 2012


Of course, I went to test this and crashed it... Oh well. The Google + Hangout with extras is what I used before and I could share my screen or my webcam. It worked well enough when we tried it this summer for a meeting of nerdy folks.
posted by advicepig at 12:28 PM on April 16, 2012


I've done this with Google+ Hangouts, which supports up to 25 people in the room. Works nicely.

UStream is OK but has kind of cruddy compression which makes the slides hard to read. The ads usually only play when somebody starts watching the stream.
posted by modernserf at 12:35 PM on April 16, 2012


Response by poster: Just to clarify, I would like the viewers to be able to see me and the projected slides so I'd prefer not to use camtwisting! And I'm quite happy to pay to remove ads or to get a higher quality stream.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 12:37 PM on April 16, 2012


« Older Gluten-free, the kid edition   |   please help me fix my hair! Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.