Dear all,

I am currently broadcasting my computer screen live to the world.

When I say live, there is actually a delay of about 30 seconds.

And when I say the world, there is currently a limit of 100 simultaneous viewers.

But you get the idea.

I'm also intending to re-instate the old Chatzy online chat box for Templot to go with it.

So what's the idea? I thought I would try something different. When someone asks for help, I could say watch at 8pm tonight and I will show you. If something isn't clear, I can repeat it or expand on it, or explain it differently.

I know I could do this on a one-to-one basis but there is no way I'm going to get into one-to-one support for Templot, as explained in the Terms of Use, otherwise it would take over my life.

Being live and unedited it is going to contain lots of stumbles, fumbles, no forget thats, and the rest. But hopefully it could be useful and better than waiting for me to produce a proper tutorial for everything.

For now all I need to know is that's it working, and change any settings needed. You can see it by going to:

 http://camsecure.co.uk/webcam/templot/cam.html

If it shows "no stream available" or locks up buffering, press F5 key to refresh the page.

It's currently broadcasting at 2048 x 1152 pixels, which is much larger than I intended, but I'm having teething troubles with the settings. For some reason which I don't understand at present, you need to zoom your browser to around 175% to see it at that full size.

But having done that the quality is much better than I expected. Unlike doing this via YouTube or Google, it is quite readable, although occasionally breaking up. Hopefully it will settle down with time.

So can you see it? Is the quality acceptable? I will leave it running for an hour or two while I have some lunch, and occasionally dabble about in Templot on there.

If you can't see it, maybe more than 100 viewers are on? Not very likely, but I can increase the number by upgrading the Camsecure subscription if necessary.

It's causing my CPU to run at 45% which is getting warm, but not too hot to touch, so I will leave it stress-testing for an hour or two and see how it copes. If necessary I can reduce the frame rate (currently 15fps).

cheers,

Martin.

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Well the first problem is that the mouse cursor is out of position.

I think I can fix that by changing to 96dpi for my screen, although it won't be very convenient to leave it on that setting for other work.

I will try that later.

Martin.



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Hi Martin,

The live display is lousy on my system. It takes ~3 seconds to progressively fill the screen with each frame. It seems to be the same at all zoom settings. I am using Firefox on Win7/64.

Rob


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Rob Manchester wrote:The live display is lousy on my system. It takes ~3 seconds to progressively fill the screen with each frame. It seems to be the same at all zoom settings. I am using Firefox on Win7/64.Hi Rob,
Are you sure it is every frame? I'm seeing the same about once every 5-8 seconds, but in between it is running at the full frame rate. I will put a bit of live video in the middle of the screen so that you can test it.

regards,

Martin.

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Hi Martin,

No it doesn't appear to be every frame as I thought. The video runs at normal speed most of the time but stops every 8-10 seconds for maybe 2 seconds. The video clarity goes haywire sometimes in between the pauses and looks very pixellated. You sometimes get a buffering symbol ( 3 dots in the middle of the screen in this case ).

The Templot crossover sits there looking fine but every 5-6 seconds it goes very blurry and starts to clear from the top downwards taking 3-4 seconds to bring back a clear view. The clear view itself looks fine.

Maybe try a bigger video ?

Rob


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Martin,

Attached screenshot. Video fairly smooth but very blurry at times. The Templot part sits there with a nice clear view and then goes blurred and takes a few seconds to be sharp again.

Going to put the chicken in the oven. Back in 5 minutes


Rob



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Rob Manchester wrote:Attached screenshot. Video fairly smooth but very blurry at times. The Templot part sits there with a nice clear view and then goes blurred and takes a few seconds to be sharp again.Hi Rob,

I'm seeing the same. I think some trial and error with the settings may be needed. This is all new to me.

I will change the video to something more scenic than fields of cabbages.

Martin.

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I am using Windows 10+Chrome. It seems generally fine. Clicking with the mouse or pressing the spacebar stops and starts the action. Occasionally Templot goes blurry briefly, but the clears. The Full Screen button works and escape reverts to a small size.

John Lewis
jlewis@clara.net
3 Nov 2107
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Thanks John.

The quality seems to have got poorer than it was an hour ago. Perhaps the current load on the servers has an effect, at mid-evening in the UK.

On the other hand, the presence of moving video in the image may affect the encoding for the whole image.

It does seem quite a bit better on my small tablet computer (but also out of sync with the large screen).

The CPU has not got any warmer, in fact may have cooled a little, so this is probably doable in that regard.

Anyone watching on Linux?

cheers,

Martin.

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p.s. pressing CTRL+F5 occasionally clears any  buffering and any accumulated delay resulting from past buffering.


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Going offline now while I play about with the settings.

Thanks for the feedback.

Martin.

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Hi Rob,

I spent a lot of time messing with the settings. I think I have got it a bit better -- sufficient to be usable anyway.

There is a limit to what I can do because I can control only the transmission from here to the Camsecure server. I have no control over the re-broadcasting of the video stream to the world. It has to be converted to several new formats for that, for different end-user devices. That is the reason for the 30-second delay. This is a cheap and cheerful service intended mainly for scenic webcams, so we are probably not able to get it much better.

The periodic "rain on the windscreen" effect is in sync with the key frames. In a video stream key frames contain the entire image and are sent every few seconds. In between them each new frame contains only the changes in the image from the previous frame, which requires far less data to be sent.

In a Templot screen capture very little of the image area changes from one frame to the next, so we could probably run for several minutes without needing a key frame to be transmitted. Unfortunately the maximum key frame interval for the H264 codec appears to be 10 seconds.

But by increasing the frame rate and transmission bit rate I have got it to clear more quickly, so hopefully it is usable like this. It is likely to vary according to the load on the server at different times of day:

 http://camsecure.co.uk/webcam/templot/cam.html

The system requires a 16:9 aspect ratio, otherwise you get black bars around the image. So I have settled on 1216 x 684 for the image. It is necessary for the numbers to be multiples of 4 in order for the screen capture to work. It can be zoomed up or down in your browser.

For most of the time there won't be any stream from my computer screen of course. I need to get on with other work. If you see a red "no stream available" message, note that it won't start up automatically when the stream does become available. It is necessary to click on it and press CTRL+F5 to refresh it, or alternatively close the page and re-open it later.

If you see a lot of buffering (flashing dots), the 30-second delay will gradually increase until you are well behind the live stream. In which case do CTRL+F5 to catch up.

I'm intending to embed this in a Companion page along with the Chatzy chat room for live messages. That's always available, see:

  https://www.chatzy.com/38974068411275

To find the room password, in Templot go to tools > metric calculator and note the word on a green background.

regards,

Martin. 

 

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