Streaming video can be easily setted up in three different ways: each of them has advantages, requirements and drawbacks.
Let's draw a scheme to make things easier to catch: in the top row you'll find the name of the software employed in each of the three ways, and further down explained their peculiarities.
Table 1. The three ways to stream video with dyne:bolic
| Mp4Live | Palantir | HasciiCam | |
|---|---|---|---|
| codec | Mpeg 4 | Multipart/Jpeg | (h)ASCII |
| requirements | an online server running Darwin broadcast software; to watch the stream an external video player is necessary. | the video camera must be directly attached to the server; needs a web browser supporting multipart content push (m$ IE doesn't works). | need just a video-in and eventually an online webserver with ftp access. |
| features | good quality and smooth framerate; can record while streaming; efficiently uses bandwidth when running on multicast; can stream audio synced with the video. | good quality; can be seamlessy embedded in webpages and works very smoothly in local networks; can stream audio synced with the video. | uses very low bandwidth; can upload video via ftp to a server; can be viewed directly from any web browser (also text based); it looks pretty cool |
| drawbacks | can be hard to find or setup a broadcast server; slower machines can't stream neither play it. | uses much bandwidth; it's impossible to have smooth movement when streaming on the web. | the image is formed of characters: nifty, but doesn't gives a clear image and is just monochrome; can't achieve a smooth frame movement. |
I'm writing an extensive research on the topic of streaming video with free software, the latest version is published online at the address korova.dyne.org/video_streaming and available as well as a downloadable and printable document: korova.dyne.org/video_streaming.pdf.