The JW FLV Player has been uploaded to the website today and Quanta Plus was installed on the Ubuntu box on Tuesday, so now it's just a matter of playing with the latter and learning how to use it well enough to get the former to work with it.
The JW FLV Player seems to work the best, from what I can see anyway, with playing back embedded MP4 files fullscreen. There is a newer version of the software but I'll go ahead and use this first while I'm playing with it.
We shall see what comes up soon. In the meantime, we're sitting on a test pattern...
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
KVM Installed
By and large, this generally isn't that big of a deal to report, but today it is and here's why...
By now, if you follow this blog at all, you no doubt have seen the website for Mater Dei Television. Our test pattern page is a very basic page done on KompoZer that was put up there to let people know that we're going to start broadcasting soon.
I was not, nor I'm still not, impressed with it.
I wanted something with DreamWeaver type quality to it, but I don't have that kind of cash right now (and since we don't have any programming up quite yet, we're not exactly getting donations yet). I decided to look open source and came up with Quanta Plus. It looks nice from the screenshots, but it's only for Mac and Linux.
Enter the KVM.
The KVM will allow me to hook one of my Ubuntu boxes up that I've not had online since we left Indiana. It's downloading right now. I'm trying to set one goal per day at this point, regardless of how big or small, that I can get done that will advance Mater Dei Television and get us on air quicker. My goal was to get the KVM up yesterday, so I briefly fell behind. Now that I'm installing Quanta Plus, I'm back on track.
Goal for tomorrow: Commence work on permanent webpage. ETA to completion: One week.
By now, if you follow this blog at all, you no doubt have seen the website for Mater Dei Television. Our test pattern page is a very basic page done on KompoZer that was put up there to let people know that we're going to start broadcasting soon.
I was not, nor I'm still not, impressed with it.
I wanted something with DreamWeaver type quality to it, but I don't have that kind of cash right now (and since we don't have any programming up quite yet, we're not exactly getting donations yet). I decided to look open source and came up with Quanta Plus. It looks nice from the screenshots, but it's only for Mac and Linux.
Enter the KVM.
The KVM will allow me to hook one of my Ubuntu boxes up that I've not had online since we left Indiana. It's downloading right now. I'm trying to set one goal per day at this point, regardless of how big or small, that I can get done that will advance Mater Dei Television and get us on air quicker. My goal was to get the KVM up yesterday, so I briefly fell behind. Now that I'm installing Quanta Plus, I'm back on track.
Goal for tomorrow: Commence work on permanent webpage. ETA to completion: One week.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Test Pattern
It's up.
Over three months since my last post (I'm horrible in that department), a move from Indiana to Wyoming, and an old DVCAM camcorder later, and we have our website up, complete with the test pattern like you would have seen in the "Golden Age of Television" from the 1950s.
I'm going to start this out by saying this is NOT the way that I wanted to do this. I would still very much like to go IPTV or even consider satellite delivery, whichever turns out to be the best way to do it based on cost and the ability to reach the audience. That said, even if we had all the money we needed to and could feasibly do both, we have a different problem...
We don't have enough programming.
So, while I'm in the process of aquiring more old films on eBay and various other sources, and producing our own new programs, we'll have to deliver our content this way. This solution will get us up and rolling, but it's only temporary. I know my computer stuff, but I'm not a computer guy. I'm a TV man and that's how I think. My opinion is that the great majority of the viewing public, while with the ability to watch TV on their computers, would prefer to sit in their family room and watch it on a TV as opposed to sitting in their office or den and watching it on their PC.
Producing these programs will be an ongoing task, but ultimately a labor of love. The next step is to incorporate in the State of Wyoming with the intention of filing as a non-profit. We will also be doing everything we can to get to the ultimate goal of satellite or IPTV delivery as quickly as possible, while providing the best quality viewing experience that we are able to in the meantime.
Things are rolling! Thanks for the prayers, but by all means, keep them up!
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Over three months since my last post (I'm horrible in that department), a move from Indiana to Wyoming, and an old DVCAM camcorder later, and we have our website up, complete with the test pattern like you would have seen in the "Golden Age of Television" from the 1950s.
I'm going to start this out by saying this is NOT the way that I wanted to do this. I would still very much like to go IPTV or even consider satellite delivery, whichever turns out to be the best way to do it based on cost and the ability to reach the audience. That said, even if we had all the money we needed to and could feasibly do both, we have a different problem...
We don't have enough programming.
So, while I'm in the process of aquiring more old films on eBay and various other sources, and producing our own new programs, we'll have to deliver our content this way. This solution will get us up and rolling, but it's only temporary. I know my computer stuff, but I'm not a computer guy. I'm a TV man and that's how I think. My opinion is that the great majority of the viewing public, while with the ability to watch TV on their computers, would prefer to sit in their family room and watch it on a TV as opposed to sitting in their office or den and watching it on their PC.
Producing these programs will be an ongoing task, but ultimately a labor of love. The next step is to incorporate in the State of Wyoming with the intention of filing as a non-profit. We will also be doing everything we can to get to the ultimate goal of satellite or IPTV delivery as quickly as possible, while providing the best quality viewing experience that we are able to in the meantime.
Things are rolling! Thanks for the prayers, but by all means, keep them up!
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Monday, October 6, 2008
Another Three Months...
I've got to do better in the "updating the blog" department. Three months is just a wee bit too long, but it's been a busy three months, although, not busy for Mater Dei Television. Well, not too busy...
I've come to a crossroads at the fledgling TV apostolate. I needed to have this up like last year, and it's not up yet. I know the direction with VoD is the right way to go, at least for now and probably in some form in the future as well. I just don't have the bandwidth to use the streaming servers like I'd like to. If I want to have more than three or four viewers at a time, that bandwidth is going to need to be somewhere around, well, T3 speed. At least two T1s, which is not one less than a T3 (for those non-techs reading this, a T3 actually has the same bandwidth as 27 T1 lines).
I figured maybe embedding video is going to be the best option, at least for now, but I don't want YouTube. I'm not thrilled with the quality of flash video in general and YouTube's quality in particular. If I could get an MP4 to play back, especially one with the H.264 compression, that wouldn't be bad...as long as the player could go full screen without that annoying navigation bar.
Well, after consulting with a friend who does webhosting and web development, I found out that embedding MP4 video is, in fact, possible. I had to find a good player, though, and I may have. The JW FLV Media Player plays MP4 format with the H.264 compression. If you follow the link and look at the quality full screen, you'll notice it's fantastic quality for embedded video, and I believe that's because when you look at that demo clip, that is AVC/AAC that you're looking at. When you choose full screen, the navigation bar comes up, but disappears with a slick fade after a few seconds. That wouldn't be bad, because it looks cheap when it stays up there. Having it up there initially and then letting it fade out would be the best of both words. It also does playlists too, so I can actually have some clips on a loop on the menu screen that people could be watching while looking over the programs.
By the way, if you download this player and try to use it without embedding it, it's not going to work. It's written to be uploaded to a website and then coded to use on a website. It IS a slick player though. I can wait to try it out.
It's not so much that I'm admitting defeat by using embedded video; I'm just starting out a little more within my means. Perhaps someday we'll have the IPTV VoD setup, but let's learn to crawl before we run.
Stay Tuned!
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
I've come to a crossroads at the fledgling TV apostolate. I needed to have this up like last year, and it's not up yet. I know the direction with VoD is the right way to go, at least for now and probably in some form in the future as well. I just don't have the bandwidth to use the streaming servers like I'd like to. If I want to have more than three or four viewers at a time, that bandwidth is going to need to be somewhere around, well, T3 speed. At least two T1s, which is not one less than a T3 (for those non-techs reading this, a T3 actually has the same bandwidth as 27 T1 lines).
I figured maybe embedding video is going to be the best option, at least for now, but I don't want YouTube. I'm not thrilled with the quality of flash video in general and YouTube's quality in particular. If I could get an MP4 to play back, especially one with the H.264 compression, that wouldn't be bad...as long as the player could go full screen without that annoying navigation bar.
Well, after consulting with a friend who does webhosting and web development, I found out that embedding MP4 video is, in fact, possible. I had to find a good player, though, and I may have. The JW FLV Media Player plays MP4 format with the H.264 compression. If you follow the link and look at the quality full screen, you'll notice it's fantastic quality for embedded video, and I believe that's because when you look at that demo clip, that is AVC/AAC that you're looking at. When you choose full screen, the navigation bar comes up, but disappears with a slick fade after a few seconds. That wouldn't be bad, because it looks cheap when it stays up there. Having it up there initially and then letting it fade out would be the best of both words. It also does playlists too, so I can actually have some clips on a loop on the menu screen that people could be watching while looking over the programs.
By the way, if you download this player and try to use it without embedding it, it's not going to work. It's written to be uploaded to a website and then coded to use on a website. It IS a slick player though. I can wait to try it out.
It's not so much that I'm admitting defeat by using embedded video; I'm just starting out a little more within my means. Perhaps someday we'll have the IPTV VoD setup, but let's learn to crawl before we run.
Stay Tuned!
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
OK...another change for the web server...
When I was still racing mountain bikes in the mid 90s, the term that comes to mind was "retro-grouch"...
I was being a retro-grouch myself when I was trying to force the issue of using an old 486 (also from the mid 90s) as a web server, largely because I could. When that didn't work, I decided to use a Pentium 1 instead (likely from the mid to late 90s).
And I DID get that to work, but...
I started thinking about something I read about Freesco. One of the limitations of it was that there was no way that it'd ever take a gigabit ethernet card. This may not be an extreme problem for the time being, but it could be in the future (especially if I used the 486, since I couldn't even find a 10/100Mbps card for an ISA bus - I'd have to stick with a 10Mbps card). The other limitation that was standing out was the version of the Linux kernel it uses. It was so old that even it'd only run the first version of the Apache web server.
These things stuck in my head, and I started reasoning things this way...
1) I would like a more up to date version of Apache web server running.
2) I just installed Absolute Linux on a spare PC. Why couldn't I run something Slackware based to run the web server?
3) The PC I just got from my Freecycle list was already running Ubuntu. Why not just run Ubuntu instead of Slackware or Freesco and make my life simpler for the time being.
4) I can always go back and play with Slackware later.
5) I'm getting about three old Pentium III grade computers from someone else on my Freecycle list tomorrow. Why not build the web server from that?
So with that reasoning, I took the wife and kids to my favorite electronics store (also known as the Happiest Place on Earth - sorry Walt, not THAT place) and picked up another gigabit ethernet card and three Cat-6 cables to start the infrastructure of Mater Dei Television's future connection. I almost bought a gigabit router, too, but the salesman talked me out of it, saying that we'll get "bottlenecked at our ISP". He has no idea I intend on running this on a T1, perhaps even in the short term, and a much thicker pipeline in the longer term.
Keep praying. We're close!
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
I was being a retro-grouch myself when I was trying to force the issue of using an old 486 (also from the mid 90s) as a web server, largely because I could. When that didn't work, I decided to use a Pentium 1 instead (likely from the mid to late 90s).
And I DID get that to work, but...
I started thinking about something I read about Freesco. One of the limitations of it was that there was no way that it'd ever take a gigabit ethernet card. This may not be an extreme problem for the time being, but it could be in the future (especially if I used the 486, since I couldn't even find a 10/100Mbps card for an ISA bus - I'd have to stick with a 10Mbps card). The other limitation that was standing out was the version of the Linux kernel it uses. It was so old that even it'd only run the first version of the Apache web server.
These things stuck in my head, and I started reasoning things this way...
1) I would like a more up to date version of Apache web server running.
2) I just installed Absolute Linux on a spare PC. Why couldn't I run something Slackware based to run the web server?
3) The PC I just got from my Freecycle list was already running Ubuntu. Why not just run Ubuntu instead of Slackware or Freesco and make my life simpler for the time being.
4) I can always go back and play with Slackware later.
5) I'm getting about three old Pentium III grade computers from someone else on my Freecycle list tomorrow. Why not build the web server from that?
So with that reasoning, I took the wife and kids to my favorite electronics store (also known as the Happiest Place on Earth - sorry Walt, not THAT place) and picked up another gigabit ethernet card and three Cat-6 cables to start the infrastructure of Mater Dei Television's future connection. I almost bought a gigabit router, too, but the salesman talked me out of it, saying that we'll get "bottlenecked at our ISP". He has no idea I intend on running this on a T1, perhaps even in the short term, and a much thicker pipeline in the longer term.
Keep praying. We're close!
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Web Server
OK...so the web server isn't going to be an old 486...
It looks like I'll be building it up with an old Pentium 233 MMX instead.
Granted, the older computer would have been nicer to use, and I got it to boot Freesco and post and whatnot, but nevertheless, those old IDE controller cards are next to impossible to come by, and if you do have any (I have two), they're near impossible to configure.
So, I'm using an old PC that was freecycled to me. I just need to get a larger hard drive now so I don't have to mess with it for awhile. Ideally, when I get another computer to use as a web server, I'm going to load Absolute Linux on it and stick it in my office.
Waste not, want not.
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
PS - Someday, after MDTV actually has a signal going out over the internet, I will return to actual Catholic content on this blog and move the tech talk over to another one. In the meantime, though, one blog is sufficient.
It looks like I'll be building it up with an old Pentium 233 MMX instead.
Granted, the older computer would have been nicer to use, and I got it to boot Freesco and post and whatnot, but nevertheless, those old IDE controller cards are next to impossible to come by, and if you do have any (I have two), they're near impossible to configure.
So, I'm using an old PC that was freecycled to me. I just need to get a larger hard drive now so I don't have to mess with it for awhile. Ideally, when I get another computer to use as a web server, I'm going to load Absolute Linux on it and stick it in my office.
Waste not, want not.
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
PS - Someday, after MDTV actually has a signal going out over the internet, I will return to actual Catholic content on this blog and move the tech talk over to another one. In the meantime, though, one blog is sufficient.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Quick Update
The MDTV Darwin Streaming Server has been up for almost a total of ten days now, running nice and steady. I've not gotten a chance to do much more on that due to a few other projects that have been in the works. My old server that was being used for DSS was decommissioned when I put the new one online, but I will be recommissioning it soon to be used as an FTP server. It makes too much sense to have one of those, especially if I'm out in the field editing video and I need to get some programming back to the "station" (if that's what you want to call it - Facing facts, it's the server in my basement).
I'm also working on a web server that is based around a (get this) 66Mhz 486...
Scary, isn't it?
The nice thing is that I'll be using Freesco on that, and I upgraded the RAM in the box so it can do all the nifty things Freesco will do. 64MB RAM is nothing these days, but in a 486 running Freesco, that's almost overkill! I plan on running the Apache Web Server with this, and since that's all this box is doing (holding web pages that will ultimately redirect the user to the videos on the VoD server, which is on a considerably faster server), I really wouldn't think that I'd need anything faster.
Besides, if this works well and keeps costs down, it helps because that would be more money to put towards either the production of new programming or the cost of obtaining old programming. And besides, the Freecycler in me says that it's best not to stick another PC in the landfill. Even the Vatican is trying to "Go Green" these days.
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
I'm also working on a web server that is based around a (get this) 66Mhz 486...
Scary, isn't it?
The nice thing is that I'll be using Freesco on that, and I upgraded the RAM in the box so it can do all the nifty things Freesco will do. 64MB RAM is nothing these days, but in a 486 running Freesco, that's almost overkill! I plan on running the Apache Web Server with this, and since that's all this box is doing (holding web pages that will ultimately redirect the user to the videos on the VoD server, which is on a considerably faster server), I really wouldn't think that I'd need anything faster.
Besides, if this works well and keeps costs down, it helps because that would be more money to put towards either the production of new programming or the cost of obtaining old programming. And besides, the Freecycler in me says that it's best not to stick another PC in the landfill. Even the Vatican is trying to "Go Green" these days.
Stay Tuned...
ICTM,
Chuck, MI
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