I've been looking at what's required to set up a live cam through my water sport school website which will be launched later this year.
I'm not sure if broadcasting it on Ustream or something similar is the way to go or not. It seems like these are aimed at broadcasting an event rather than a full time cam.
I'd love to hear what others have used or know of being used as far as camera's, software etc. It's definitely not my area of expertise, but I'd love to be able to set something up.
Any advice or recommendations greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Muzz
you might already know this, but if not
there are a couple of free programs out there that will turn a standard consumer webcam into a "capture device" which can then be used to feed video to a free RTMP / H264 stream encoder program like "flash live encoder", then you just need to create a free account with a streaming host like TwitchTV.com. The quality is very good, you choose the compression data rate at your end and twitch simply transfers that stream on to your audience, and I think you can broadcast 24/7 at 24fps to 30fps at various resolutions with Twitch. 2Mb/s data rate looks pretty good at 25fps 1280 x 720 and most of your audience can watch that data rate smoothly.
You will need to do a little research on setting the "live encoder" output to talk with which ever streaming host you wish to use.
There are a couple of simpler solutions which turn any smart phone/tablet with a built in camera into a IP camera, but you would need to share your internet IP address with your audience which can be risky, and you will probably have issues with too many simultaneous connections from your viewers.
Select to expand quoteHaircut said..
feed video to a free RTMP / H264 stream encoder program like "flash live encoder", the compression data rate at your end and twitch simply transfers that stream 24/7 at 24fps to 30fps at various resolutions with Twitch. 2Mb/s data rate looks pretty good at 25fps 1280 x 720 and most of your audience can watch that data rate smoothly.
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Just what I was going to say 
I've done a bit more research based on some of the advice here.
Encoder
Adobe Flash Live Encoder seems the way to go on that side of things.
Streaming Host
With the streaming host I think Justin.tv seems the best option, Twitch.tv looks to be aimed for the gamers who live stream their game play (Minecraft etc)... not sure why anyone would want to watch someone playing PS, Xbox etc?
I also couldn't find the free version of Twitch.tv apart from a trial, Justin.tv offers a free option.
I'm not sure, but I think Twitch.tv and Justin.tv are part of the same organisation so maybe the two options are geared towards either gaming or events etc.
Camera
I'm still unsure of what's the ideal option for the camera. There's camera's available with all the bells and whistles which go at around $900 or so which would be great, but I'm looking for the cheapest I can get away with at this stage (but with good quality image).
Any ideas or suggestions on this front? I'm not sure if something like a $100 Logitech cam in some sort of housing would give a decent image or maybe it's just not achievable to get a good image quality without spending the bucks.
Thanks again for your advice, hopefully this is helpful to others also.
