Webcasting

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What is Webcasting?

A Webcasting is the process of creating and delivering an electronic transmission of video and/or audio from a source to viewers or listeners on their personal computers, smart phones and mobile devices. The term webcasting is a derivation of the term "broadcasting" which is to mean that the Internet is used as the medium to transmit signals from source to destination.

Webcasting includes encoding and Internet transmission of a number of different formats that can be decoded and played on a wide variety of user devices such as computers and smart phones. Examples of webcasting decoders are Apple QuickTime, Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Windows Media Player.

Webcasting is generally defined as live Internet or local area network broadcasting where the source content is encoded in formats that can be transmitted over the Internet (or over a LAN) and decoded by software players. The term "Webcasting" is generally considered as a real time and live activity. Webcasting is also called Streaming or Live Streaming. All refer to the same set of activities.

Advantages of a Webcasting

Webcasting (also called: Live Streaming or Streaming) can reach viewers and listeners on their computers or smart phones. This means webcasting can deliver a message globally and cost effectively using the Internet. Webcasts can be archived for later viewing as Video-On-Demand content.

Disadvantages of Webcasting

Webcasting, sometimes called Web Casting, requires planning in order to deliver a good level of quality to media players that may reside on a number of different user devices. PC's, Mac's and Smart Phones can all require different formats to play content properly and therefore a webcast can be difficult to produce well without adequate planning.

How do I get started with Webcasting?

For commercial webcasting support we recommend engaging a service provider with experience managing both events and, specifically, webcasting events. TKO VideoConferencing can provide all the required services from planning through delivery of your webcasting event.

Webcasting for personal use is best provided by Google's YouTube services. Additional areas to research for personal webcasting tools should include, the Adobe Flash Encoding and streaming products and also Apple's QuickTime encoding and streaming products.

What does a Webcasting cost?

Live Webcasting for commercial business use is priced per hour. One hour of live webcasting costs $2,500 USD to $5,000 USD. Additional hours of webcasting cost $500 to $1,500 USD per hour.

Important factors that affect Webcasting costs include:

• View registration which may include conditional password access
• Starting page special requirements and layout
• Number of encoding formats needed [which players does the live webcast need to support]
• Presentation of slides or other materials simultaneously with the live webcast