Steve On Java

This is the second installation of my Live Streaming Guide, which will go over all the hardware you need to get setup.  While you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on professional gear, it is possible to put together a high quality setup for a fraction of that cost.  You may also be able to reuse some of your existing hardware, further reducing the cost.

This setup is targeted at streaming a live presentation over the internet that includes a speaker and possibly some slides or a demo.  Not all of this hardware is required to get started, so I will present it in order of how critical it is to the quality of the presentation.

If you are just interested in knowing what I recommend and how much it will run you, skip to the Buying Guide.

Choosing a Camcorder

The first thing you will need is a camcorder to stream the video.  The reason to go with a camcorder rather than a webcam is that you will have more options for lenses and zooming, and will be able to get a much higher resolution (as high as 1920×1080 for HD).  HD camcorders are pretty common and fairly inexpensive; a good one can be bought new for around $600.  Also, chances are that you or someone you know already has one that you can take advantage of.

One important consideration for camcorders is the computer interface.  If the camcorder supports Firewire (IEEE 1394), you are in pretty good shape.  This means it will probably support DV or HDV streaming to a laptop that has Firewire, and video streaming software will automatically pick it up as an input device.  A popular model for doing video streaming is the Canon Vixia HV40 which can be purchased for around $650 new:

Canon Vixia HV40

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Thursday evening was the big JavaFX 1.0 Launch, and the WidgetFX crew was not going to be left out, so we crashed the party in style.

The event was an all-star line-up kicked off by Jonathan Schwartz in full-blazing ponytail style.  He went over the full vision of code ubiquity between the desktop, set-top boxes, DVD players, and mobile devices, but I was too mesmerized by the cool slide transitions to really pay attention.

This was followed on by a very animated Eric Klein who felt like he was on the verge of jumping out into the audience to share his overflowing enthusiasm.  He was also joined by a beaming Nandini Ramani with demos aplomb:

Nandini and Eric Demo JavaFX 1.0

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