Webcasting events over the Internet introduces a whole new level of complexity and challenge to what would normally be a straight-forward live event. Its always a goal for live or to-tape events that video's camera work be consistantly clear, close up to the talent, yet give a fair overview of whats occuring on stage and in the audience. The trick to webcasting is doing all of the above but keeping in mind the limitations of the Internet: dicey bandwidth limitations, low end viewing client computers, choppy or blocky video quality, and clear audio.

I've perfected webcasting services using advanced encoding customizations, lowest-common-denominator viewing client software, and care of staging and lighting consistancies. I've found that an open stage with few or no props, consistant colored lights washing the stage, and a slight backlighting to offset the talent from the background will create a field of vision to the camera and computer's encoder. Reducing the number of artifacts introduced to the video stream allows the encoder to spend more bandwidth on the talent's face and expressions and less effort on the background.

Mixing in a presentation's PowerPoint slides or video reels into the stream involves a bit of planning (and hopefully rehersal.. sigh..) so that the transition from a talking head shot to a fairly complex slide or movie doesn't chop up the limited bandwidth at the detriment of the audio. The presentor's talk, his or her voice, is what keeps the remote viewer's attention, and any reduction of audio quality frustrates and potentially looses the viewer's attention. Its my goal when webcasting that a remote viewer experiences a clean good show, without the distraction of downloading some player, codec, and glitches in video or audio. I can execute webcasts that do not let the viewer walk into those pitfalls.

I'm proud to have run a number of webcasts including Medicine Shoppe International, XBiz Entertainment, and Hitachi Data Systems.