I've been casting jazz nonstop for 43 hours now. I find it mildly interesting that OtC has picked up about 7 new followers in that time, mostly brand new JTV members it appears. (Too bad JTV ditched the Followers pages so I can't go back and find them later, and too bad JTV eliminated the messaging function so I can't send them a "Welcome to OtC" e-mail. But that's another story.) It's nice that there are some jazz lovers out there.
I know this story is getting old, but once again I have hope. Even Mrs Mensch is giving the "thumbs up" (see image at left). As I writ this, my latest test cast has been up for over 19 hours straight with nary a dropped frame or an involuntary cessation of the cast. Even better, the lag started out at around 12 seconds and now stands at around 15 seconds. An increasing latency is an indication that their were pauses sometime during the cast. A constant lag tends to indicate the opposite. So, what was the problem? you might ask. The change I made that appears to have made a difference is in the xml file that contains all of FMLE's settings. I discovered that file contains parameters that are not accessible through FME's GUI. Specifically, I found a setting for an AUDIO frame rate as distinct from the video frame rate. The latter can be set from the GUI, the former cannot. I noticed that the frame rates were different. Video was set to 20, audio was set to 15. Why there is an audio frame rate, I do not know. "Maybe those numbers should be the same?" I thought, so I put video back down to 15. That seems to have done the trick. Something simple, arcane, and essentially invisible. Jeez, did I spend a lot of time tracking this down. I'm not 100% ready to declare victory since I've done so prematurely a few times already. Actually, I think I had several problems going on at one time or another. I DO think the LanOptimizer process was interfering with my upstream throughput. I DO think there were some ISP problems last Monday night. I DO think there are some unresolved OBS issues that I'll still need to resolve if I want to use that software. And of course, I really did fry my netbook AC adapter. I should be receiving the replacement for that today. Nonethless, I am definitely encouraged by the events of the last 24 hours. I'll continue to run some tests, including with the mic again. Hopefully, everything will be ready to go for next week's show. Again, thanks to everyone for your patience. And thanks to Dylan for doing some troubleshooting on my behalf earlier this week. I want to apologize again to all the viewers of last night's show. You all are very forgiving and understanding, and I appreciate that. I take responsibility for my casts, and I want and expect things to run smoothly. However, as we all know, sometimes stuff happens.
While rearranging things, apparently I fried the AC converter for my netbook. By the time I discovered the problem at 7:45pm, the netbook battery was down to 30% and wouldn't have made it an hour much less four. I run my mic through the netbook so it can be the right volume. With my set-up, without the netbook, I can't speak to you, and that's a problem. So I scrambled to, first, find an alternate converter, and then not finding one, to grab our other older netbook to use instead. That brought about a different set of problems, including a noisy electrical connection that I couldn't resolve and a suboptimal volume control that I occasionally didn't operate correctly. The other big problem was the bad quality of the cast itself: frequent drop-outs, jerky video, restarts, and out-of-sync audio. That really puzzled me since I had been working all week to resolve those issues and thought I had them mostly licked. As it turns out, when I went upstairs after the show, I found out the rest of the family was having problems, too. My daughter didn't have an internet connection at all in her bedroom and her TV picture was breaking up badly. Then I noticed we lost internet completely as the cable modem went into signal reacquisition mode. So my hope is that most of last night's webcasting problems were due to a temporary issue at Charter Cable that they will quickly resolve. I will be following up with their support department to see what is going on. Obviously, unreliable service is unacceptable. Generally, Charter has been pretty good so hopefully they can get things straightened out. Pronto! See you all next week. And don't be surprised if you see me doing more test casts later this week. What content is JTV trying to encourage, and what demographic? Let's look at their recent actions for clues.
They want content that will draw an audience live but is of no interest to people after-the-fact (No more show recording or archiving.) They want people who expect to engage their friends and acquaintances over several platforms, OR who don't engage with each other at all outside of the cast. (Elimination of messaging. Disinterest in replacing the PM function and the /invite command. Disinterest in fixing the Followers pages, and then elimination thereof.) They want content that can be pre-empted randomly by ads without losing its appeal. OR they want people who will commit to a Pro account. (Insertion of mid-roll ads.) They don't want porn but they are OK with crude, offensive, or threatening behavior. (Relaxation of the TOS. Reduction in Admin tools.) They accept viewers and casters as young as 13, based on the user's self-reported age. Identity authentication is minimal. Anonymity is fine. Put that all together and what do you get? Heck if I know! Actually, I think their relatively new Creativity section might fit right in. Creativity often shows people doing a process that takes a long time to complete. Like sculpting. I doubt Creativity will have the legs that gaming does at Twitch, but you never know. That might be an exploitable niche. |
AuthorGil is the host of the "Gil's Channel" webcast on Vaughnlive.tv. References
These sites are particularly helpful when it comes to learning about and tagging music. Some are blogs. Others are labors-of-love reference sites. And to be complete, I'm including the well-known sites I use often.
45 RPM Records of the Ohio River Valley 45cat (7" vinyl database) 45worlds (non-7" singles db) The "A" Side (informative blog) Album Liner Notes (reference) Allmusic ASCAP Repertory Search (db) The "B" Side (informative blog) Billboard Hot 100 (historical) Blues & Rhythm (magazine) BMI Repertoire Search (db) Both Sides Now Publications British Dance Band Encycl'p'a Bullfrogs Pond - #1s by Date. Bullfrogs Pond - Artists. Bullfrogs Pond - Yearly Chart. Classic Jazz Online. Classic Urban Harmony. The Cosimo Code. The Database of Popular Music. Dave's Music Database. The Dead Rock Stars Club. Discogs (database). Donald Clarke's Music Box. The Doo Wop Society of So Cal FAU Recorded Sound Archives. Garage Hangover (60s 45's) HeyPally's 78 rpm Page. It's Psychedelic Baby (blog) The Jazz Archive Site. JazzBiographies.com Jazz Discography Jazz Downloads (1917-1955) JazzStandards.com Jeff's 78 Labels Label Discographies Lyrics.net (searchable lyrics) Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebook Music VF (US & UK hits db) Noal Cohen's Jazz History The Online (78) Discog. Project Rhythm & Blues 50s Oldies Man Rock & Country Encycl & Discog Second Hand Songs SESAC Repertory Search (db) Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Hvn So Many Records, So Little Time Songbook (Doc's Songbook) Soulful Kinda Music Spectropop Express Spirit of Rock Webzine Tony's Rock & Roll Links Traditional Music Library (ref) Tredwells Music Centre The Vocal Group Harmony Site Wikipedia YouTube Archives
October 2020
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