Free video streaming into Second Life
Rob Smart | June 27, 2007Well I haven’t done any machinima posts of late, but I can feel a few in the offing having just completed one concept video for a client and with the promise of a few more lurking not too far in the distant future.
The machinima I’ve been doing has generally been of the type you use when you can’t do a live demonstration of SecondLife, it’s been produced to either illustrate potential scenarios/concepts or show case existing business aspects of secondlife. The venue for displaying this machinima has been at trade shows or during large presentations.
Video and particularly Machinima seems to keep cropping up in my day to day job at the moment, a client I’m currently working for has a need for a streamed video service for use at events. We want something reliable but cheap that we can use for the occasional streaming of a live event etc. into Second Life (any suggestions welcome 
The one service I have been playing with at the moment is a startup called Veodia (veodia.com) which is currently in beta. It’s very similar to another beta startup
called ustream (ustream.tv) the one distinct and important difference (with my SL oriented slant) is that it makes available the video stream in quicktime format. Meaning that it can be streamed straight into Second Life with no conversion faffing or trouble finding dedicated servers to run a Darwin streaming server on.
Ian pointed me at Veodia a few weeks ago, however it took my account registration email some time to materialise (it was trapped in Hotmails spam catcher) so I was a bit slow off the mark in checking out what format the streaming was done in. Kevin Aires as ever the video streaming investigator got in there and found it was quicktime compatible and blogged within IBM about getting a Veodia stream into SL.
After finally getting into my account yesterday I started up my softcam desktop streaming app, set up a quick feed on veodia, grabbed the rtsp link from a view source and set the media url for my land parcel in Ukanipo.
Here’s the result a slightly disturbing world within world effect…
.
So what you are seeing here is the result of softcam capturing my desktop video display output, streaming it up to veodia and then it being streamed into SecondLife. Infinite loop complete. (ps the quality is better when you don’t go for this wheels within wheels effect)
So whats this useful for ?
-video conferencing: pipe your webcam into SL without the need to host your own streaming server.
- live demos: do desktop sharing to a crowd in SL so you can do demonstrations from other apps (shared browsing or 3d app tutorials anyone?), simutaneously visible on the web stream too.
- world tours: get all your guests into one place with a screen in SL and then disapear off streaming your secondlife journey back to the assembled SL crowd.
- video link parts of SL: running a live event over several islands ? then provide video linkups between each of the islands so everyone can see what’s going on.
best of all veodia which is in beta is currently free, oh and it records too 
hey there,
that sounds amazing, i was searching for that for a long, long time. is there a possibility to send invitations as a partaking user?
thx in advance
cheers from germany
guttertec
you should be able to sign up without an invite guttertec, after i realised my first invite had got caught up in the hotmail spam engine i registered with another and had access to veodia the same day.
That is a trip. Nice hack man. Kudos!
Rob,
I am using Veodia to create broadcasts for our web-based travel company but have wondered how I can add/mix screen captures to the braodcast and then came across your post.
I’ve downloaded Softcam and I use a Phillips SPC 900 webcam to capture me onscreen so to speak. I wonder if you could tell me if it would be possible to “mix” the feed from my webcam with that of my Softcam whilst broadcasting/recording with Veodia?
Thanks,
Colin
Liverpool, UK
Very helpful post! But I’ve problems with veodia finding my Softcam-Stream. I just get an “Camera not found” error in veodia. Do you have any idea?
thx
Thanks, i have problems… camera no found error in veodia, but i instaled softcam 1.5. ¿how to streaming real time from softcam capturing desktop and veodia? thanks…
Very exciting possibility here. Thanks for sharing this. After looking for a direction on Second Life this might help.
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[...] http://robsmart.co.uk/ – Free video streaming [...]
Of course you’re all giving Veodia the right to use your imagery where they will, apparently, though you do retain ownership. You have granted them the right to show it and view it though, if I’m reading their disclaimers right… cool otherwise though.
[...] Applicable? Naked Imagination ? Blog Archive ? Free video streaming into Second Life [...]
[...] Naked Imagination ? Blog Archive ? Free video streaming into Second Life If not then maybe this? [...]
[...] peek at the different ways to stream live video into SL. Inspired by posts from both AndyPowell and Rob Smart’s blogs I set up a quick trial with Veodia, knowing their live video webstreaming service is now [...]
BTW, Veodia just launched a new free service called Screenjelly (http://screenjel.ly) that records your screen activity and voice as a video without downloading anything. Pretty cool for catpuring stuff happening in-world. See http://www.screenjelly.com/watch/p_-yyeEE6zE for an example.
several questions:
a:: does it support only quicktime streams
b: could you post the code or a permanent link to the code from within secondlife.
several comments::
a: i use webcam max because it has oodles of features
b: i use livestream because the maximum free user bandwith
c: i use OpenlifeR17-SX.msi viewer because it has been optimized from white paper up to focus on fps
&” youtube search for openlife gathering code
i will be incredibly sad if no one shows me code on how to do these things
Could you post the lasting connection to the code from within a next life?