Start Your Own Internet TV Show

At this point your broadcast should have started. There is a panel for viewing the input and output and the microphone levels. There are tabs at the bottom of the interface that allow you to monitor CPU load, the number of connections and more. The number of connections defaults to 5. If you expect more than 5 people to view your broadcast at once, there is a registry key that you can edit to allow 50 people to log in at once. If you go this route, hopefully your CPU and Internet connection can handle the load. Here is the key to edit if you want to increase the maximum number of connections:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSoftwareMicrosoftWindows Media ToolsEncoderMaxClientConnections

Set the number to anything between 1 and 50.

Returning to the tabbed panes, go to the general panel. This will give you a broad overview of your broadcast. You can monitor CPU load, the number of clients, disk space and see if a lot of frames are being dropped.

If you notice that a lot of frames are being dropped and your PC is running at 100% constantly, go to the statistics panel. Look at the Audio Input and Video Input tables on the left.

If you see that a lot of samples and frames are being dropped, you need to either free up system resources or you should go ahead and use a lower quality. You will save processor power and will end up with a higher quality broadcast than if you stay at a high setting and keep dropping tons of frames. Open up your task manager and kill and processes that you don’t need. The machine you are broadcasting from should be solely broadcasting if you expect to have a decent event. Kill any screensaver applications, weather software, instant messengers, etc. and you will have a lot more muscle for your show.

On the ‘Server’ tab there are more statistics to monitor. If you have forgotten your addresses you can find them again in this tab. The ‘Connections’ tab allows you to monitor your client connections and when they connect and disconnect. The ‘Event Log’ displays the events that occur while broadcasting.

Once you get a feel for the encoder, get out your mullet wigs and have at it. You can use an object or embed tag to include the broadcast in a web page. Broadcasting events is a lot of fun, and if you have the CPU power to save it to file, having archives of your event can add a lot of value to your overall web site production. Feel free to email links to your live events once you are up and running.