As you may know I have been flirting with live broadcasting on Ustream for a while now. While it is a great free service I was not particularly happy about the default webcam stream, which appears to be very low resolution, not much higher than 320×240. Ustream offers high quality streaming using their browser plugin and even high definition-like using the Flash Media Live Encoder from Adobe. Unfortunately, neither of these is available for anything else than Windows.
I wanted to try so much that I even tried the Flash Media Live Encoder under Vista. Well, it was a total fail… My computer froze after broadcasting a few seconds even at VGA-like resolutions. I think I spent a whole Sunday trying various configurations and setting but no luck. Slow computer? Buggy software? Probably both.
Few days ago I learned that Adobe is now in the process of making a Mac version of Flash Media Live Encoder. Hurray! In fact, it is already available for selected beta testers but no timeline for public release. Fortunately, I was able to find a kind soul who has shared the beta package for Mac with the rest of the world (thanks Google search for finding me this) and so I got the opportunity to become an unofficial beta tester.
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