The software used for video webcasting murlis is OBS studio which can be downloaded here.
When running OBS Studio for the first time it will ask if you want to run the auto-configuration wizard. In this case, reply No.
Click on the “Settings” button and select the Video tab. Check that the Base (Canvas) resolution is set to 1920x1080 and the Output (Scaled) Resolution is set to 1280x720.
Add a new capture device. By now you should have connected your camera so this should appear as an option.
It may be necessary to manually set the resolution of the camera, especially if it is a built-in laptop or desktop camera. Set the Resolution/FPS Type to Custom and the Resolution to 1920x1080 if possible.
You should now see the camera picture in the preview window. If necessary drag the picture to fill the window.
It may already fill the window in which case no action is required.
Go to Settings and select the Stream tab. Set the service to Custom…. , make the Stream Key visible (Show) and enter the following:
Server : rtmp://nginxaws.bkwsu.eu/live
Stream Key : <country>_<city>?login=<username>&password=<password>
Where:
•<country> is the country from which you are webcasting
•<city> is the city from which you are webcasting
•<username> is allocated to you by the webcast team
•<password> is allocated to you by the webcast team
Make sure “Use authentication” remains unchecked. Always use an underscore (_) between <country> and <city>.
Note that if the <country>_<city> in the Stream Key exactly matches the name used for an audio murli webcast, and that audio webcast password protected for local students only, then the video channel will also be password protected in the same way. If you want the video stream to be public then maybe add the postfix, “public” to the steam name, for example:
<country>_<city>_public?login=<username>&password=<password>
An example Stream Key may look like this:
uk_london?login=uk&password=someS3cretPassword
It is possible to create more than one stream e.g. one for private, password protected murli webcasts and another for public webcasts.
Also in Settings, go to the Output tab and make sure that the Video Bitrate is no higher than 1500 kbps. A setting of 96 is recommended for the Audio Bitrate for speech programmes. The encoder may be set to “Hardware” if such an option is available. If set to “Hardware” the encoder can work more efficiently. On a laptop this may translate to longer battery life.
The audio will probably come from the Desktop/Laptop microphone input by default. Change the audio settings if this isn’t what you want. Also, it is probably advisable to mute the Desktop Audio otherwise any alert that comes up will make a sound on the webcast.
When all is ready try pressing “Start Steaming”. It will take up to 5 minutes for the channel to appear on the main https://webcast.bkwsu.eu page.
To check that you are webcasting OK before that time, you can see the instant list of streams at http://nginxaws.bkwsu.eu/stat.
It is possible to embed a webcast player directy into a website using the following HTML code in the body of the page in which you want to display it.
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://webcast-cloudfront.bkwsu.eu/videojs/webcast.js"></script>
<script> new WebcastPlayer({streamName:'<stream name>'}
);</script>
<div id="playerBox" style="margin:0 auto;text-align:center;vertical-align: middle;"></div>
<div id="connectionsBox" style="text-align:center;font-family: 'Orienta', sans-serif;font-size: 20px;"></div>
Change <stream name> to be the name of the stream in the OBS Studio Stream Key before the ?. For example, if the stream key is:
uk_london?login=uk&password=someS3cretPassword
then the <stream name> would be uk_london.
Here is example of a web page using an embedded player : https://brahmakumaris.uk/live. In this case the connectionsBox div is not included as the number of connections was not wanted on the page.
The sound is often too quiet since it is not easy to get the microphone close enough to the person speaking and the PC/laptop is designed for a headset, not a microphone at a distance.
It is essential that the sound is loud and clear for a webcast otherwise people will switch off.
The following steps will boost the volume on OBS.
1) Press the gear symbol in the Audio Mixer window as shown for the mic.
2) Select Filters
3) Add a Limiter filter
4) Set the Threshold to -30 dB and the Release to 500 ms.
5) Add another filter, this time a Gain filter
6) Set the gain to be +29 dB (i.e. 1dB less than whatever the magnitude of the threshold was set to).
Everything should be boosted now. If it is too much then set the threshold to, say -20 dB and the gain to +19 dB.