"...damn fine job, you do good work !!!" |
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On May 27, 2010 at 2100 hours eastern US time I went live with my first broadcast using VidBlaster v1.17. Anyone wishing to view the results can catch it as a rerun at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7258575 ... I do a weekly broadcast with an alternative energy theme ... the format is pretty much a standard late night TV talking head show ... I do a brief monologue then introduce a guest who provides a demonstration of some technique, gadget, theory and/or makes a sales pitch ... The show attracts a small, loyal audience but rarely gets more than 50-100 live viewers with maybe another 100-500 watching the show as a rerun ... the show is broadcast on USTREAM.TV and has been aired now for about 1.5 years ... my recorded show archive contains nearly 60 hours of recorded content ... I had previously used WebCamMax as my video switching and special effects software ... while this software is pretty rudimentary, it performed well for me for quite a while ... my show is not monetized so I have been hesitant to put any significant monies into into improving the quality of the equipment and software I use as these costs are an uncompensated out of pocket expense ... when I would look at the $50 price tag of WebCamMax and compare it to the $500 price tag for the Pro version of VidBlaster, the dollars and cents of it made the decision for me ... However, I wanted to move forward with the implementation of the 16:9 screen format and the latest versions of WebCamMax turned out to have some really annoying bugs that the publisher seems very slow to address ... I had played with earlier versions of VidBlaster and in general was impressed ... however, when I tested the 1.17 version, the Chroma Key implementation knocked my socks off ... while I still feel the price is a bit higher than it should be, the overall ease of operation, feature set and quality of broadcast stream are in my opinion superior to the Telestream product or any other similar product I have reviewed ... having followed this forum for some time as a lurker, it seems that the publisher is involved and active ... I have seen a consistent trend of product improvement and new features added over the past year that I have been monitoring ... so I took the plunge, payed the toll and implemented VidBlaster ... As far as the show I performed last night, it was fraught with the usual technical problems a live webcast of this sort encounters ... you will see my guest for the evening struggling to get his audio, video and Skype issues resolved ... having done this for over a year now, I am used to such things and we managed to work through the problems and deliver our message in spite of the technical issues ... but VidBlaster performed well and at this point any earlier buyer's remorse over the $500 price tag has been put to rest ... The hardware setup: Elite Group (ECS) P45T-A Motherboard In addition, I do from time to time use a variety of phone patches and other gizmos for special purposes ... my local video is provided by 2x22" Samsung DVI monitors which are a joy to use ... I also have in my bag of tricks a number of USB dongles that can be used as supplemental audio/video inputs and outputs when I need to do something unusual ... I use a second computer that is identical to the one described as a my monitoring system so I can see the live stream coming back as if a viewer ... this system is also a hot spare that can be become the broadcast system if I experience problems with my primary system ... While my setup is certainly not optimal, it appears to be adequate for my purposes so far ... during my broadcast last night I was monitoring system utilization carefully ... with 11 modules running in VidBlaster (including 2 players, chroma key, lower 3rd overlay and 1 screen cap session which seem to be CPU hogs), Skype Video conference with two guests, IceChat IRC and the, USTREAM Broadcast Console to control recording of the show, I was pulling just under 70% CPU utilization and running at just over 2gb of RAM usage ... was a tight fit but it worked ... Mike: damn fine job, you do good work !!! Gary Hendershot |
