Streaming media in Second Life

Note: If you are not a user or developer of Second Life, you can skip this post.

I spent some time this week.....ok a lot of time......re-inventing the wheel and trying to get voice/video/data streaming into our virtual campus to enhance training, technical support and executive briefings.

Getting pre-recorded video, video/audio, or audio-only into Second Life is relatively simple.  You need to post the content in a QuickTime-compatible format (QuickTime, Mpeg-4), preferably including what is referred to as 'hinting' (which causes it to stream quicker), to a publicly accessible media streaming site, like Streamhoster. You then open the 'About Land' menu on a property that you own, select the Content tab, and you can post in the parcel's Audio and Video stream URLs.  For video, you select a texture that the video is associated with, and when you create a new prim you select it and change the texture to the one you just associated under media.  If you do those steps, when you click on the prim it will stream the video you provided the URL is Quicktime compatible.

(Audio is easier, you just provide a URL to a site like Shoutcast, and if you have audio 'activated' in your menu bar, you receive the stream per parcel or per estate.)

Doing live video streaming is harder.  For starters, here are the pieces you will need:

• DV Video Camera or firewire-camera
• Video mix & capture application
• A streaming server, such as QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS) or it's open source sibling Darwin Streaming Server (DSS).
• (optional) A streaming relay server for moving the video from a (firewalled) Intranet to a Second-Life-visible-Internet host.

In my case, I simply used the iSight in my MacBookPro, and used QuickTime Broadcaster or Wirecast to capture the video and then encoding it for streaming by DSS.  At this point, with the proper configuration, you can stream to other clients on your network (Intranet or LAN). 

This is where I am presently.  I need to get the video stream off of my streaming server to a publicly available relay that can be pulled by the media texture within Second Life.   Until then, Skype audio/video will continue to get high-usage.

Comments

[Chris]

Yes I am at that point as well - trying to stream hinted movs straight onto SL using DSS - and i was wondering why it wouldnt work!!! Thanks Christian - i had started thinking that i will probly need a hosting site on this - well 246am and last night it was later ...but now i know - i did manage to get a webcam image onto sl using an sdp and qt broadcaster - that was a cool moment but only i could see it ...back to the drawing board i think