Recording WMV for Streaming

[helpben]

My employer has just dumped this task onto my desk. We are to capture a 30 minute early morning (5:30 am) tv program and stream out over a server downtown, so it can be accessed from a community portal. I have built the portal. He was looking for content and made this arrangement with a local station. So I am going to purchase a computer for my home office and one for downtown so we have redundancy. I also have to buy the server and streaming media licenses (5 concurrent). My budget is 4500.00, can I do it? This looks like a great product, I have searched locally for someone to do this with no success. Any ideas or suggestions about equipment and software would be appreciated. The server bandwidth is not included in this budget.

[null_pointer_us]

Ah...sorry, I am not sure I know enough business-speak to understand what you are asking. By portal you mean a web site with links to the streaming content and information about it? What format are you streaming...MPEG or some kind of low-bandwidth alternative? Will you need to transcode? Edit?

Some points:

1. Transcoding MPEG files takes a lot of time. IIRC, a modern 2.4GHz PC should be able to transcode a 30-minute MPEG file to another format in around 30 minutes.

2. There are two types of TV tuner/capture cards: hardware and software. Hardware cards capture in MPEG (v2) format and typically have very low CPU usage, so you can put them in an older PC (e.g. a P2-450MHz) with decent memory/disk bandwidth without problems. Software cards use the CPU for encoding and so they require a more modern PC (e.g. 1GHz or more), but they can capture in a variety of formats.

3. Sorry to say it, but I think Beyond TV is overkill for what you want. BTV really only provides advanced TiVo-like options such as an integrated program guide, multiple tuner support, and a 10-ft. user interface. Tuner cards typically come with their own software which does recording, so you can simply manually schedule a 30-minute recording. Make sure what software the tuner card comes with, though.

4. If you wish to edit the recording before putting it on the air, you will need to pick video editing software that supports your chosen format. Keep in mind that it may take some time to save your changes. Windows Movie Maker 2 is perfectly fine if you only want to cut commercials, pull clips, and add transition effects between clips. For postprocessing tasks like cleaning video, there is some free software available, but it can be hard for novices to use. There are also decent commercial packages available. It's been some time since I have looked into this, but I recall that Matrox had a board which allowed real-time video editing and IIRC some postprocessing options.

6. If the PCs are only to be used as headless recording boxes, they could be cheap (even refurbished) Dells with decent support options, 512 MB RAM, and decent-sized hard drives depending on how many segments of video you wish to keep around. Just order tuner cards at another store and add them with the PCs arrive.

7. If you wish to edit the video using those PCs, you'll need something more powerful. Get a fast P4 with at least an 800MHz system bus and probably 1 GB of RAM. I've heard that more is generally better, but you may want to get a more expert opinion on this.

8. I'm getting out of my territory here, but IMO the base server wouldn't have to be anything special - just a reasonably modern PC filled up with memory and a high-quality SCSI RAID. Use something with mirroring if you want to archive and/or striping if you want to increase performance.

[helpben]

By portal you mean a web site with links to the streaming content and information about it? What format are you streaming...MPEG or some kind of low-bandwidth alternative? Will you need to transcode? Edit?

The portal I have built for this incorporates some unique tools/software related to this industry, which is the subject matter for the morning show. We will be leaving the show intact, with commercials. So I will not be editing the video. We were thinking of only providing a wmv file to stream. Bandwidth is not an obstacle. So I want the capture card to encode to wmv if possible, and then we will offer that from the server downtown.

Tuner cards typically come with their own software which does recording, so you can simply manually schedule a 30-minute recording. Make sure what software the tuner card comes with, though.

You make this sound pretty simple. Which tuner card would you recommend?

IMO the base server wouldn't have to be anything special - just a reasonably modern PC filled up with memory and a high-quality SCSI RAID. Use something with mirroring if you want to archive and/or striping if you want to increase performance.

Do you think I should buy one computer for downtown with the tuner card and also use this machine to deliver the stream? That would be just perfect. We are not archiving the shows. We could burn it off on a cd though if we wanted to have a back up.

Do you think we need Windows Server 2003?

Thank you for trying to help me.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by helpben

You make this sound pretty simple.

Hmm...I went to look over the manufacturer-included recording software, but they only seem to offer MPEG. Sorry about that! Beyond TV can record directly to WMV, or you can download the Windows Media 9 Encoder Utility from microsoft.com and have it record directly to WMV or transcode MPEG recordings to WMV. Note that transcoding to WMV can be _very_ time-consuming.

Originally Posted by helpben

Which tuner card would you recommend?

I have little experience with software-encoding tuners. Personally, I would look for one from Newegg.com which has good reviews for stability and picture quality. Keep an eye out for reviews that mention problems with technical support, picture quality, incompatibilities with the software that you will be using, etc.

You have not mentioned what connection you wish to use: co-axial, composite, or s-video? S-Video is basically the best in terms of quality, especially coming off a digital cable box. If you use some kind of cable or satellite box, you will need to manually set the channel on the box to whatever channel you wish the tuner card to record.

Originally Posted by helpben

Do you think I should buy one computer for downtown with the tuner card and also use this machine to deliver the stream? That would be just perfect. We are not archiving the shows. We could burn it off on a cd though if we wanted to have a back up.

I am not sure I understand you. If you mean having one machine doing both the recording and the serving, then I suppose that's possible from a performance standpoint if serving up WMV does not take much CPU. The key is that you do not want anything from the server to interrupt your recordings because that would of course ruin your content for that day.

If I were doing this, I would buy a cheap Dell with Windows XP Home or Pro and a software-encoding tuner. Set them up with BTV to do WMV recordings daily at 5:30 for 30 minutes. Then have your portal running on a separate server with Windows Server 2003 and have it pull the file off the Dell at 6:02 and serve it up.

I have no experience setting up streaming servers, so I cannot say exactly how much CPU, RAM, or disk bandwidth you will need for your server. I do not know how WMV serving scales with more users. I assume that you need to err on the side of having separate PCs instead of having corrupted recordings or unresponsive servers due to inadequate specs.

As a reference point any new or refurbished Dell should be able to handle the WMV recording just fine.

I noticed that the Windows Media 9 Encoder Utility had some kind of stream-serving option when I checked it out. Not sure if you need it, but it may be worth looking into.

Originally Posted by helpben

Do you think we need Windows Server 2003?

Yes, XP is not the best choice for running an Internet server for a business. I heard there was a small business server version which might be useful. Microsoft.com usually has some kind of comparison page that explains which version you need for doing specific tasks. Again, I do not have experience setting up a server; this is just what I've heard.

[bnflaherty]

OK -- this Thread really is boarderline.... Off Topic...

If we are going to use BTV for this purpose -- XP would need to be used -- as 2003 is Not supported...

BTV Can be used for this purpose and using Link as the Client piece.. Then you can use practically any tuner -- but Hardware would make more sense...


Streaming Mpeg would also be advisable -- as the CPU requirements would be less on both the client and server..