This is the set up I used for the big streaming event from the other night.

So, with two MacBooks, two DSL lines, a point-and-shoot DV cam, and my Handy Zoom 2 recorder, I went ahead and streamed the speakers from my employer's grand gala event over to a group in Boston that was holding a simultaneous event. And It worked. So, yeah. Go Ustream.

I went with the two DSL lines becuase I've been burned by flakey connections before, and I really wanted to be able to monitor the incoming stream as it went out over the intertoobs. Also, I knew that in a pinch, that at least one of the two DSL lines would be better than the other. If I learned nothing from Star Trek, its that a third-layer of backup is when you really start having a backup. I don't know what that has to do with Star Trek.

I had contracted with an "events' provider to get a live video and audio patch from the event. I bought an Analog to Digital adapter that takes a component input and converts them over to a firewire interface. It'd used to to stream the opening sessions of BarcampMIlwaukee5. It worked just fine then.

For whatever reason, I couldn't get the signal off of the entertainment company's firm to play nice with Ustream, so I ended up going with Plan B, which was my Cannon HV30 camcorder. It ended up being a little off center, but it's ustream, so the signal was hardly going out hi-def.

For the audio, I used the Handy Zoom 2 recorder to convert the incoming audio into digital over the USB connection on my mac, because I couldn't get the uStream client to pick up the audio input from anything other than mac's built in microphone. The Zoom2 will, ocassionally, especially if bumped or jostled, or in response to audio clippng, freak out and just make a lot of horrible noise. But that didn't happen during the broadcast. I'm going to need a better solution for future events, because having good audio makes the choppy uStream video worth watching.

What else would I do different? There are lots of better choices than UStream and the built in ustream client, I think, out there for professional use. I haven't experimented with that. I also really wish the A to D adapter had worked. It would have made a much better presentation overall. And been less stressful for everyone. It was frustrating that It worked at Bucketworks and it worked at my internal tests here at the office, but wouldn't work come showtime.

Sure, a tri-caster and a nice fat piece of bandwidth would have helped, but remember, we're doing this on a shoestring. Imagine what it would have cost just 10 years ago to send a video signal from Milwaukee to Boston? Nowdays, you can do it with junk you have laying around in your office. Its only going to get easier and better to be your own best publisher.