How To Report News…more or less

By now most everyone has grown up with television most, if not all, their lives. In that time, the nightly news has made an incredible impact on the people that watch it. Unfortunately it also made an impact on the people that create the stories.

Charlie Brooker does a good job showing just how formulated the new is. The challenge for every television and multimedia journalist is how to use the formula when needed, but not depend on it.

Is your internet speed real?

This speed is about half of what I pay for

This past Friday, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) released a set of tools to test your internet speed. While speed tests aren’t new, their reasoning is.

The FCC is basically taking a survey on people’s internet speed across the county to decide what broadband really is. You can read more about it from Technology News www.technewsworld.com or the FCC website at http://www.broadband.gov/.

When I read this, It made me think about how speed has directed my work in multimedia and my online enjoyment at home.

Different types of streams, different needs for speeds

On the consumer end, it’s great to know the true speed you’re getting from your ISP. This affects your download and upload speeds and, more importantly to me, it affects media streams.

There are two ways to stream media. The first is true streaming, where you view the video or hear the audio at the same rate it reaches your computer. Like watching live tv. The second type is a progressive (downloading) stream, where the stream is downloaded to your computer ahead of where you view it (buffered). YouTube and Hulu are a great examples of progressive streams.

As technology has gotten better, so has streaming. While watching a show on Hulu.com, I don’t notice much difference at my higher speed now than I did with my lower speed a year ago. That’s while I’m watching. What has changed is my buffering wait time, and I don’t outrun my buffer.

I don’t have a real good example of true live streams, because most sites use a form of buffering. Ustream.tv for example is very close to live streaming, but the end-user has control over how live it really is. They can turn the buffer to the lowest setting to get the video more ‘live’, or they can turn it up for a better quality. I try to keep it as low as I can. This helps when you’re trying to keep up with the conversation in a chatroom.

If someone has a better example of a ‘true streaming’ site, please let me know.

Your upload speed can make a real difference when you live stream

There are many sites you can stream live from; Ustream.tv, livestream.com, justin.tv, stickam.com. Sites like those are great, because they do most of the work for you. You don’t have to worry about having a dedicated streaming server, or having too many viewers suck your bandwidth. But they can only do so much.

Streaming sites work best for webcams but I’ve done full 3 camera remote broadcast over Ustream.tv. It wasn’t perfect, but I worked with what I had. Here’s the recording of the broadcast: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2354476

My greatest obstacle was the internet speed. I was working with about 1.5mbps download, and about 700-800kbps upload. Not ideal for streaming. I had to lower the video quality, as you can see, and slow down my transitions to compensate for the slower speeds. I’m still happy with the broadcast, because it was more about the content than the quality that counted.

It’s good to know your limits

Whether your are live streaming, producing a podcast, or chatting with your mom on Skype; knowing your limits is important. You can’t trust the speed you’re paying for. At home; I pay for 20mbps, and you’ll notice from the photo my download speed is about 12.5mbps. My upload speed is even lower than that.

There are a lot of variables on the true speeds your ISP is serving you. On a perfect day (more likely night) I may get that 20mbps I pay for. That would mean almost no-one else on their servers, on my router, the stars align, and I do a little spell. What I’m saying is; lot of variables go into internet speeds, and it’s probably less than you expect.

I check my speed regularly to know where I’m at. Knowing this helps me figure out how long a FTP upload or download will normally take. It lets me know how to handle a streaming assignment, or what quality to set Hulu to. In some cases, knowing your ISP speed can mean the difference between a happy client or not.

If you don’t wish to test your speed from the FCC, you can always check it at www.speedtest.net

My first entry

Hello everyone.

Waiting for an interview

My name is Jason Nagy. I’m an online multimedia producer for a number of newspapers and websites in Oregon. Before entering the online world, I worked in television and radio.

This is my first blog post to cover the news and techniques of online multimedia. If you have any questions for me on the world of online video, audio, or other multimedia, let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning from each other.

What types of multimedia would you like me to cover in my new blog?
(polls)