Berkeley Multimedia Seminar MBONE Tools

This page provides directions for getting the software needed to receive the Berkeley Multimedia Seminar broadcast. The seminar is broadcast on the Internet Multicast Backbone which supports efficient delivery of audio, video, and data streams to large numbers of users all over the world. Mike Macedonia and Don Brutzman have written a nice Introduction to the MBONE. More extensive material is contained at The MBONE Information Web.

This page describes what you need to do to view the Berkeley Multimedia Seminar broadcast. To view a broadcast you must get client software to receive and display the audio and video streams and establish a connection to the MBONE network. Viewers exist for all major platforms. The broadcast produces the following streams:

The combined broadcast typically takes 100-200 Kbits/sec. We try to keep the video bandwidth on the H.261 stream low so you can watch the broadcast on a 128 Kbits/sec ISDN line. The MJPEG video stream uses higher bandwidth, typically above 1 Mbit/sec, which produces a higher quality image. This stream is sent on a separate multicast address and only on networks with higher capacity (e.g., networks on the Berkeley campus and experimental high speed networks such as NTON or DARTNET).

In addition, we usually put up a second whiteboard that can be used as a backchannel to communicate with the engineers producing the broadcast. Gurus are also encouraged to check out the RTP Monitor [ref needed].

The remainder of this page gives advice on acquiring and using software to receive these broadcasts. Send email to viddev-list@BMRC.Berkeley.EDU if you have questions or suggestions for improving the instructions.

Berkeley

Instructions for people in EECS are available here. People in other departments on campus will have to contact their system administrators. You can also check the MBone page on the Data and Communication Networks Services server.

PC/Windows95 and PC/WindowsNT

The freely distributed Mbone tools have been ported to Windows/95 and Windows NT. The current release is a beta release, but you're welcome to try it. See the Microsoft BARC Telepresence Group page.

A commercial product has also been recently released by Precept Software .

PC/Linux

A very good set of pages on MBONE tools and Linux were developed by Michael Esler at the University of Virginia.

Macintosh

Apple has written an extension to Quicktime conferencing that will receive MBONE broadcasts. The tool is called Quicktime/TV.

Unix Workstations (DEC, HP, Sun, SGI)

The best source for Unix software is the FTP site at LBL.
Web page maintained by Larry Rowe.
Copyright © 1996