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QuickTime Broadcaster Available
firegate writes "A lot of people have been thrilled since the release of Apple's Open Source Darwin Streaming Server. Unfortunately, to stream live video, you previously had to buy a product called Sorenson Broadcaster (Win/Mac). Apple has now released a tool called QuickTime Broadcaster which accomplishes the same task, except this product is free. From what I understand, this application is a scaled-down version of Sorenson's Broadcaster. Apple has only released a Mac OS X version of the program for now, so I guess that we PC guys will need to keep buying the Sorenson product for now. Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be."
The funny thing is, I feel like Sun is just kidding themselves when they say they compete directly with MS - sure, MS is a big competitor for them, but they only impact a small part of MS. Apple actually competes against a large portion of MS's offerings, and they have the established reputation (and the loyalty of current customers) to possibly do well.
Will they kill MS? I don't think so - but they stand a chance with this agressive push of "we can do things that the PC can't or can't do as well" of reclaiming some market share.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Apple doesn't care how profitable something could be on Windows and Linux.
They're not trying to have the enormous grasp of three platforms. They are perfectly content to maintain their loyal following, and hopefully steal mindshare and eventually market share from the other two. They don't give a good god damn about whether a windows user would like it, because frankly, they don't want to have software on Windows beyond what is absolutely necessary (read: quicktime).
As a newly appointed Mac user, I couldn't be happier with that strategy.
Besides, how could it be profitable if they give it away for free?
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
Hopefully, Apple will realize how profitable a Windows or Linux version could be.
It can't be very profitable if they give it away for free. They would have to charge for it like Sorenson already does, making the free Mac streaming solution cheaper. Which is exactly the way it is and exactly the way Apple likes it.
Lies about crimes
I remember a while ago, hearing about the MPEG-4 licencing schemes. Wasn't it like two cents per minute of live broadcast video? Since Quicktime's MPEG-4 implementation is the ISO standard, they can't even claim that they aren't using the standard specified so that they don't have to pay licensing fees. I guess MPEG-4 is going the same way as MP3, that there is someone out there who you (technically) owe money too, but nobody really cares. Sometimes I really wonder where the money is made in codecs, and remind myself that they don't always, thank you vorbis.
I'm sure Apple realizes how profitable a Windows/Linux version would be....for PC manufactures and Microsoft.
I don't understand why everyone feels that it's Apple's job to transfer its competitive advantages to every other operating system people want to use. If you really feel that QT Broadcaster is valuable and useful - why not consider buying a Mac? OSX is unix-based, the hardware is pretty good, the price delta is pretty small, and you can even run Linux on the hardware. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
1) download and install Streaming Server and Broadcaster
2) start Streaming Server
3) start Broadcaster and point it at Streaming Server
4) start Movie Player and enter the URL of your Streaming Server
5) if video doesn't stream, plug in camera and repeat step 4
6) save movie to iDisk, in the Movies directory
7) log into homepage.mac.com
8) create account
9) create new movie page, select background, and select saved movie from iDisk
10) there is no step 10.
First of all, if you can play it on any platform, encode on any platform, and stream from any platform -- Apple will have a leg up on Microsoft
Microsoft has a streamer server that only runs on their OS. Apple has a streaming server that only runs on their OS. Now by Apple porting their streaming server to MS's OS, they will have a leg up on MS, how?
-Brent
And, unlike OS9, Mac OS X is really superior to Windows. Once Macs get in the door, they stand a real chance of taking over. So, where's the profit in giving away Windows software again?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Why do you need steps 6 through 10? I don't think there's any advantage to hosting the
~jeff
-Turkey
-Turkey
QuickTime Broadcaster will stream AC3 audio without video without any trouble, if that is what you want.
You don't have too. Darwin Streaming Server is free and the source is available (hell, there are a couple derivative projects available at Freshmeat). Oh, you want to to encode for free also? MPEG-4 and RTSP are published formats, go find some software to do it or do it youself. Oh, you want a nice packaged solution with a pretty GUI that makes it very easy? Suck it up, buy a Mac and quit your bitching.
WHAT proprietary hardware?! The firmware on all new Macs isn't called Closed-Proprietary-Steve's-Baby-Firmware, it's called OpenFirmware for a reason. PC-100 RAM. IDE. SCSI. Firewire. USB. All the subsystem code for the OS is opensource. There is nothing that is closed about Mac hardware.
They also posted a $32 M dollar profit today. It's down from last quarter, but they seem to be doing better than most companies these days. I think their current business plan seems to be working just well for them.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
MPEG4IP includes an open source live MPEG-4 encoder for Linux.
They will certainly keep it Mac only (at least for a while) in order to sell xserves. An xserve with free streaming software will be competetive with a WinTel box plus expensive streaming software. Thus more xserve sales.
Frankly, I don't really care as much as you seem to about the cannonical platform argument -- after I was an Amiga freak (and saw all that money wasted), I tried to be a little bit more objective about what systems I used. In any case, there's no need to take a such a defensive stance on this...I have nothing to prove here.
Hey I'm not complaining -- I'm insisting that Apple needs to further support cross-platform development in order to succeed in the video-streaming software/hardware industry...which, I might add, is extremely competitive, and difficult to stay in.
Then how come only Apple makes Apple (or Apple-compatible) computers? Oh right, they're not closed per se...but since Macintosh (or compatible) computers are not available anywhere other than from Apple it is the same as being propritary. Especially considering the fact that if you don't use their hardware, you will never get support. (Sun is open too, but I still consider their hardware propritary -- you have to buy it from Sun).
Look -- I'm not talking about buying a streaming server for myself. I'm talking about what corporate America is going to buy -- which is Apple's intended customer for the server-side of this. You've been telling me what I can do with this -- but what does Apple support? Corporate America will not buy software/OS'es that are not supported (this is why IBM, Dell, Oracle, and RedHat, etc have been busting their ass to get it properly supported). I'm afraid that I've assumed that everything in this this paragraph was implicit in the discussion.
In any case, I'm interested in reading your response...
--Turkey
-Turkey
QuickTime broadcaster can do audio-only streaming.