Blackout's Box LIVE - my new show.. gh13, webcams... all live from a mobile 4g pack

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
Please help me test this out!

I have configured a backpack using 4g cards that can broadcast live HD and run on batteries and hot swap.... I can live switch multiple sources of any resolution or input.. play native mts or any other files, configure playlists, while also being live commenting on them, or any combination. I can also go to the computer screen, chat... man on the street interviews.. webcams.. multiple inputs...multiple audio routing.. amazing technology - all from a quad core i7 with multiple 4g cards.

Then, I can connect it to my google video ads and make some bucks and auto insert ads every X amount of minutes. This is really really amazing.... just trying to get myself up to 2mbit up solid and I could do full 1920 x 1080p that looked really really really good. Right now I am doing a low end 720


Let me know how it looks to you I will be up and down live all day testing various cameras, media settings, switchers, encoder, and power options.... I plan to take this setup to sundance.

http://blackout.com

Then just hit play and it's live with about a half second delay from my backpack to you.

- Blackout

I'm curious how it looks on macs vrs PCs and various browsers... currently it seems to work best on google chrome.. I haven't tried safari yet.
 
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Blackout said:
Please help me test this out!

I have configured a backpack using 4g cards that can broadcast live HD and run on batteries and hot swap.... I can live switch multiple sources of any resolution or input.. play native mts or any other files, configure playlists, while also being live commenting on them, or any combination. I can also go to the computer screen, chat... man on the street interviews.. webcams.. multiple inputs...multiple audio routing.. amazing technology - all from a quad core i7 with multiple 4g cards.

Then, I can connect it to my google video ads and make some bucks and auto insert ads every X amount of minutes. This is really really amazing.... just trying to get myself up to 2mbit up solid and I could do full 1920 x 1080p that looked really really really good. Right now I am doing a low end 720


Let me know how it looks to you I will be up and down live all day testing various cameras, media settings, switchers, encoder, and power options.... I plan to take this setup to sundance.

http://blackout.com

Then just hit play and it's live with about a half second delay from my backpack to you.

- Blackout

I'm curious how it looks on macs vrs PCs and various browsers... currently it seems to work best on google chrome.. I haven't tried safari yet.
Click to expand...




Seems to be working well here - Firefox, and only a 3mb connection.

Can't be live though, surely? One minute you're in a subway train, swearing like a Trooper who's having a particularly bad day, and the next you're on the streets of NYC harassing the hot dog man outside Apple HQ.

Still watching - lot's more swearing at some girls outside Apple - is this sort of thing normal in New York?

Oh well........... although, I'm forced to say, if I was walking with my family and you started using language like that in front of them, transmission would cease abruptly ;)

The other credit agency was 'Experian', btw

It's working, anyway.
 
Lol! Sorry about that... that was the media player just going through every mts clip I have.... this is not an official launch just a tech test... the live part was in the lower left... or I can swap them.. or go to a webcam live.. or comment live while I play videos, or connect to multiple talking heads like on cnn.. the options are endless... I am just tesing all of the options and the ADD playback every 15 min and seeing if it returns and remains stable...

When the Trumpet stuff was done, I was using the backback recording - it was live, then what happens is it records it and plays it back when I'm not on live - but I am on live while it does that... working really well so far has not crashed for a good 6 hours.

really insane when you think about it it's beaming to a tower, then to space, then back down to a server.. then to your computer.. in under a second...
 
Blackout said:
Lol! Sorry about that... that was the media player just going through every mts clip I have.... this is not an official launch just a tech test... the live part was in the lower left... or I can swap them.. or go to a webcam live.. or comment live while I play videos, or connect to multiple talking heads like on cnn.. the options are endless... I am just tesing all of the options and the ADD playback every 15 min and seeing if it returns and remains stable...

When the Trumpet stuff was done, I was using the backback recording - it was live, then what happens is it records it and plays it back when I'm not on live - but I am on live while it does that... working really well so far has not crashed for a good 6 hours.

really insane when you think about it it's beaming to a tower, then to space, then back down to a server.. then to your computer.. in under a second...
Click to expand...


Yes, I saw the live clip afterwards - someone (you?) messing about with a cigarette lighter. That was much lower resolution than your war on Apple ;) - but still amazing for the fairly basic technology involved.

I'm in Lincolnshire UK, btw.

Just out of interest, we live in a rural community with only a slow BB connection, but your stuff streamed very well - better than You Tube or Vimeo often is, yet the resolution (on the street footage) was excellent.
 
Framerate said:
Yes, I saw the live clip afterwards - someone (you?) messing about with a cigarette lighter. That was much lower resolution than your war on Apple ;) - but still amazing for the fairly basic technology involved.

I'm in Lincolnshire UK, btw.

Just out of interest, we live in a rural community with only a slow BB connection, but your stuff streamed very well - better than You Tube or Vimeo often is, yet the resolution (on the street footage) was excellent.
Click to expand...

Probably the lighter was just a cheapo webcame... I am mixing lots of different resolutions and inputs... I can set the webcam or hvx170 to 1280 720p... just trying to get solid bandwidth... the encoder is very good for LIVE!
 
Ivanhurba said:
Worked nearly perfect, appart from the stuttering.

Great work!
Click to expand...

The stuttering on the audio was happening for a few reasons. I was really trying to push the quality level, yet I was on a 'TEST' account with livestream and therefor limited to 500mbit bandwidth up. I was just popping over that with video target set at 420 and audio at 44.1 64mbit.

I was popping 'over' the 500mbit here and there and it would throttle me down or do some funky stuff.. I think the 48k to 44.1 realtime conversion might have been causing the audio stutter too,.f but I think I managed to push some amazing quality and smooth framerate for that low. The 'PRO' version is $350 a month and allows 1mbit up and I think 3000 user hours of bandwidth at that rate but you can put in any sponsorship system you want so I could throw in my google adsense video ads which do fairly well. Right now those ads are making THEM money, not me.

I did a shoutcast radio show for several years and at the peak of it was everaging 3000 to 5000 live tuned in listeners and and the worst of it (the start) about 20 to 100. So I am trying to guesstimate what my audience will be when I return to the internet AND shoutcast, but in truth I am trying very hard to push the worlds first truly interactive live comedy improvisation show to hbo, showtime, or comedy central or the like. It would feature me going into various locations in wild character getups like full old lady / old man prosthetics and then some puppet stuff and then some straight up comedy sketches. The show would be 1/3 live 1/3 sketch 1/3 kind of monologing / stand up type. I would feature a celebrity stand up comedian each week to help me in my trickery. They would have to be good at improv. I did stand up for a while and a lot of stand up comedians are NOT good at improvisation believe it or not and they flounder when their 'written' tested material runs out. I am the opposite I prefer the insanity of making it up as I go.

Here is one of my old lady charcters but via phone, this was interactive in that the radio call in described his mom, and her ticks, and then I proceeded to gently harass her soar areas without being too mean and trying to keep things light and funny while the son and father listened to the show in the other room on headphones.

http://www.blackout.com/blackout/audio/pranks/clintsmomprank.m3u

As to the tv show, as pre-recorded bits/sketches are playing, my crew and I would zoom to the next 'live location' and set up. Several poeple with hidden cams would be in place that all feed wirelessly to the backpack transmitter laptop that could be in a van on the street with my producers monitoring all the hidden cams and choosing angles, while also monitoring the proprietary flash software I am having built that allows the lower 3rd of the screen to have a popup window sort of like blu-ray live where the audience will see something like:

Saw I am in a Chinese buffet....

Should Blackout:

a> start licking all the spoons in the restaurant
b> try to steal the soup by putting ladels of it in his purse (dressed as senile Gladys alcoholic old lady character)
c> start urinating (fake bag setup in my blouse) and call for help

In real time people on both the internet and on network could choose with their mouse or remote and then bar graphs would show the real time results and I would be fed the answer by an earpiece from one of my producers. The answer would be shown on the screen and the story / improvistaional style candid camera would proceed in that direction.

After a choice is made, "What should Blackout say: _"

floats on the screen and you can type one line on your remote or xbox or internetchat room.. whatever you are on.
The producers would filter through all the 'noise' and pull some great lines from the audience and feed me that line,. As I say it, the person who write it in would be credited on the lower third of the screen and also credited as a 'writer' of the show in the end credits.

Nothing like this has been done before on live network television. There are some gay attempts at interactive stuff on the web but I have been keeping tabs on it and it all sucks. Even Tom Green who has some serious cash to throw around has a show and a 24/7 feed on http://tomgreen.com because he wanted to get away from network control but he honestly has gotten kind of lame. I watched it and I was bored. I am a fan of his older more ballsy stuff though.

I am in talks with some people at microsoft's xbox live division to perhaps do it exclusively on xbox live.. it would be cool "Blackout's Box LIVE on XBOX Live" but we'll see if that goes anywhere or not.

I explained this idea to George Carlin before he died (my good buddy toured with him for a while and was an opening comedian for Carlin so I got to meet and talk with him several times) and Carlin was in love with it... the technology wasn't totally there yet and sadly Carlin passed so his influence on making it happen dropped but I still have connections to his old agent.

I am trying all avenues I WILL get this mofo show on the air one way or another. This internet version is more of a test pilot. When it goes network the quality will have to be network. But I am getting VERY close. If I can get 2mbit steady up the quality is amazing amazing but livestream wont take it I think they cap out at 1mbit but I really love their control sofwtare it was very well designed and thought out and many major networks like mtv and cnn use them as their live on the web provider. It's basically like having a virtual grass valley switcher at your command on your laptop. Newtek (the old Amiga Toaster Flyer company) makes a similar device but they are priced insanely and I wonder how the company even survives in todays market.
 
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rambooc1 said:
Blackout, how are you doing the "bonding" with the multiple 4g cards??
Click to expand...

I am testing out multiple companies 4g/3g cards as we speak. One company, CLEAR (owned by Best Buy) allows you to have multiple cards and click 'Allow Simultaneous Connections' amd it uses the bandwidth from whatever you have plugged in so I could have 3 or 4 of them. (I have 4 usb 3.0 ports on my laptop)
and theoretically have 4mbit up... but it's not quite working reliably and it appears that after about 2 hours or 3 hours of continues live broadcasting the throttle me.. like I have used my bandwidth cap - even though the literally states unlimited 4g bandwidth for $55 a month.... I don't think they planned for anyone like me to get on this thing/... ;)

Time Warner cable also has a 4g/3g usb card out that seems to be similar... and I am trying to get to the head of their tech department to see if I can pay extra and get the damn throttling turned off - but they also promise no bandwidth cap but they are not letting the card run at it's max. 4G cards are capable of 7mbit up - they just disable it.
 
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Blackout said:
I am testing out multiple companies 4g/3g cards as we speak. One company, CLEAR (owned by Best Buy) allows you to have multiple cards and click 'Allow Simultaneous Connections' amd it uses the bandwidth from whatever you have plugged in so I could have 3 or 4 of them. (I have 4 usb 3.0 ports on my laptop).
Click to expand...

So the cards software bond within your laptop, i have not seen that method. I'm considering this hardware bonded method http://www.mushroomnetworks.com/product.aspx?product_id=1001 which allows higher upload speeds, the host end combines the individual 3g/4g signals at a monthly rental. Maybe suitable for you. I think the unit bonds up to 8 different cards.
 
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I got the spinning beachball while your page was loading and then Safari quit. The same thing happened a few days ago on a photography forum, loading a large image, so it could be a Safari problem my end, but thought I would let you know. MBP running Snow Leopard.
Sounds interesting anyway.
 
PS: I will be changing some settings and doing some more testing today. I'll pop a message here when I go on live again. I may drag the laptop into Manhattan. Maybe I'll go into b&h while broadcasting LIVE and demand they make the GH2 shoot at 100mbit.
 
rambooc1 said:
So the cards software bond within your laptop, i have not seen that method. I'm considering this hardware bonded method http://www.mushroomnetworks.com/product.aspx?product_id=1001 which allows higher upload speeds, the host end combines the individual 3g/4g signals at a monthly rental. Maybe suitable for you. I think the unit bonds up to 8 different cards.
Click to expand...

What are their prices? Right now I am paying livestream premium and it's pricey lemme tell ya. But they are the big boys who do streaming for MTV, VH1, ACADEMY awards.. ect...

I pulled everything down and styarted from scratch it's quite a powerful setup but there is a learning curve or you will get SCREWED for $$$$

After I saw my first bill for a live pro 24/7 stream I pulled it... I was not happy.
 
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