Broadcasting video and bandwidth issue

Question

I need to broadcast on the Internet weekly live video events. One attempt was made with Skype and it worked pretty well, but it was only with one user. We expect 50 users and we have a low bandwidth here so I guess Skype won't be a solution.

What do you recommend for broadcasting live video events to 50 people with low bandwidth from the video source ? Free solutions are preferable.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you have at least 300-500kps of upload bandwith available you can push an rtmp stream of your live event to a CDN like youtube, dailymotion, livestream ...

In terms of software I already used:

• Livestream, which provides among other things a tool called procaster with which you can broadcast your desktop, or a section of your desktop. You can even broadcast a capture of your skype window ! ( it will not be very beautiful, but it works ). Livestream also has many tools which allow to make a chat during your live event with the viewers of the event.
• Flash Media Encoder (aka FME ), which is a free tool provided by Adobe, which will encode to rtmp any video camera connected to your computer. You can then push it to a CDN like YouTube or DailyMotion.

All of this is free of charge, with sometimes some limits on the number of simultaneous viewer, and/on an ad-supporting scheme which will play an advertisement before your live video.

Answer 2

Another option may be a Google+ hangout. Especially if you want some sort of user interaction with-in the program.