What is a Webcast?
With today’s technology, attention has
been shifting away from movies, television and radio to computers.
Nearly every entertainment and business process is able to take place on
a computer, and people are looking to the Internet to find media and
useful information. One example of the move away from other media to the
web is the development of webcasts. Essentially, webcasts are
broadcasts of recorded or live presentations via the Internet. Since
their introduction, webcasts have begun to compete with television and
radio broadcasts of news, events and business events, and they represent
an easy and effective way to transmit recordings to a huge number of
people at once.Webcast History
Webcasts came about in the mid-1990s, at beginning of the Internet
boom. The term was coined when webcast pioneers Mark Cuban, Howard
Gordon, William Mutual, Chraig Schmieder and Peggy Miles joined together
with a large group of other webcast experts to choose a name to
describe the technology they were creating. They wanted something that
would immediately signal to people that the technology involved sending
audio and video over the Internet. One of the first known webcasts was
in 1995 when entrepreneurs Michael Dorf and Andrew Raisej partnered with
Apple’s Webcasting Group to broadcast concerts from 15 different clubs
at the New York Music Festival on the Internet. The next year, Apple
also webcast a Metallica concert. From there, the technology became more
and more popular, and all sorts of companies began to use webcasts to
transmit recordings.
Webcast Technology
The technology behind webcasts is relatively simple. An audio or
visual system picks up the audio or video you want to stream and
transfers it to a host’s computer. Then, it is encoded using special
software and delivered to a server called a content delivery network
(CDN). The CDN is used to bring the content to the Internet. When the
content is delivered, it can either be viewed live or recorded, so that
people can watch it after it happened. When people view or listen to the
webcast, a media program on their computer will decode and convert the
webcast from the CDN to stream.
Make Your Own Webcast
Today, you don’t have to be an innovative technology specialist to
have your own webcast. The technology is readily available and easy to
use, and with the right software and equipment, you can stream any event
live or recorded to the Internet. If you want to create a webcast, you
should first find an Internet webcasting platform. There are lots of
free and cheap resources out there, so don’t just settle for the first
one you find. Make sure your computer and recording equipment is up to
date and compatible with the program. If you don’t have a camera on your
computer that you want to use, you can set up a camera on a tripod and
connect it to a computer with a firewire cord. Make sure you also have
an audio connection so that the sound gets picked up, too. Then, once
you have the proper technology and software, perform a practice run to
make sure that your webcast will happen seamlessly once you are ready to
go live.
Source : InternetCorkboard.com
Source : InternetCorkboard.com
