Webcasting's Big Day: MySpace Going On Now, Oprah Later Tonight

I can't remember a previous time when two webcasts of such large scale took place on the same day. I'm watching the Operation MySpace webcast now and the video looks great. I have the high stream going at 1.5 Mbps 1.3 Mbps and am not getting any distortion. Full screen looks pretty good but has some pixelation on a 15" monitor, which is to be expected. KulaByte is encoding the stream at low, medium and high bitrates and Akamai is delivering the video, being played back with Flash 9. Will be interesting to hear what the simultaneous stream count is for this when it is over, what the average bitrate was and how many could get the HD stream.

And later tonight, Oprah will be doing another class on Oprah.com and says that all previous technical issues have been worked out and that they expect an even larger audience than the 500,000 simultaneous they had last time. The Oprah site says that so far they have over 800,000 people pre-registered. Limelight Networks will be delivering that webcast and it will require Move Networks client.

Update 4:41PM EST: For the past 10 minutes, the My Space video is really stuttering and the audio is a few seconds behind the video. The video has dropped to about 12 frames per second from the 30+ I was getting before. Moving down from the high to the medium stream is not solving the quality issues. Lots of stuttering and the low stream is doing 8.2 frames per second for me.

Update: Akamai has informed me they will not be giving out traffic stats from the MySpace webcast. For more technical details surrounding the encoding of the event you can read this article on StreamingMedia.com

Comments

[Jason Cronkhite]

Hi Dan,

Can you please provide some background on what type of system you were watching the event on? For those interested here is a FAQ direct from Operation MySpace page:

http://creative.myspace.com/design/_ck/opmyspace/profile/FAQ.html

Thanks, Jason Cronkhite, Kulabyte

[Dan Rayburn]

Sure, I'm on a MacBook Pro. 2 GHz Intel Core Duo and 2 GB of memory. Running 10.4.11

[TMD]

I had zero problems watching O.M. earlier. In fact the full screen mode played really well.

[nancy hart]

Wow, what an event!. I watched it twice in Full Screen. It looked as good as the cable or Satellite HD I have seen. Who is this Kulabyte? Where did they come from and how come we have never heard from them till now! I hope Fox does American Idol this way...Way to go US Military! Way to go Kulabyte and MySpace!!

[max]

I watched both live webcasts all the way through. How could you ever compare a "postage stamp" sized video player window using WM9 to the almost HD like full screen flash myspace broadcast. Did you see the quality coming all the way from Kuwait? Our US troops looked fantastic!! There was no comparison. What matters most is quality and experience and that was definitely not the Oprah video. I can see that any day on YouTube. A full screen HD type webcast is where its at! MySpace rules!!

[bstruhl]

So...what happened with Oprah on Monday night?

[Dan Rayburn]

Max, I don't see anyone comparing the two webcasts. Not fair to compare them since they are two different kinds of events, different types of content and done at very different encoding bitrates. An Oprah interview with no music and very little motion does not need to be encoded very high or at HD as the content does not warrant it. Two very different events with two very different types of content.

[Robert Klug]

Dan did you:
1. Speed Test
2. Perform a Tracert
3. Check the health of your ISP and its peering?

[John Teal]

News FLASH – this was FLASH. “Live” HD FLASH!

Sea change here people – FLASH. Not WM9, no no no.
This was FLASH -- “Live” FLASH! This fact was mentioned in passing several times above but didn’t seem to register. Dan, I think this merits further comment – this was not done with WM, they chose instead “Live” FLASH!

“Live” streaming FLASH!

[Marvin Taylor]

Ditto John.

I am not sure if Dan realizes the importance of the "Flash" impact. If Kulabyte can do Live high quality, 2 pass VBR encoding and stream compliant to Flash players, now in VP6; then after NAB they say for H.264 Flash, then the world will change. Mac users and 99% of others (flash adoption) around the world have an easy-no hassle solution for Live high quality, even HD stream viewing over existing networks and programing, the world will change. I hope Adobe capatalizes on this makes it a top strategic effort this year for the company, if so Flash will slaughter Microsoft efforts again to get domination with silverlight (or was it Crackle, Sparckle, Sizzle or the others they tried before silverlight). I also understand that MTV and Viacom has purchased several encoding units this month from Kulabyte and plans to use them for the Nickelodean Kids Choice awards on March 29 and other live events. I saw the Operation My Space on a 42 inch HD LCD in my living room and it was Awesome! I will be waiting to see this March 29 event if MTV uses it for this.