College Sports Information Directors of America

Technology Committee Member Jim Junot of Virginia State University shares his video streaming experience using Stickam.

The e-mail came at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22.

The CIAA (Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association), of which Virginia State University is a member, wanted me to set up a live web stream of the 2008 CIAA Kickoff Luncheon.

The luncheon was going to be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday, July 24, a little under 36 hours from the time of the e-mail.

My initial thought was my late mother’s favorite saying. When I was a kid, and I said I wanted a very expensive toy, my mother would say “People in Hell want ice water, but they’re not going to get it.”

For some reason, I didn’t think that would work in this case.

Virginia State University has a great campus, and it’s completely wireless. Being wireless, however, can be a blessing and a curse.

Wireless is great because, no matter where you are on campus, you can access the web.

On the downside, the school had never done streaming of any kind from on campus. The school’s server isn’t set up for it, and the few times the athletic department had tried it, the results were jerky and the feed would crash after a few minutes because the upload speed just wasn’t fast enough.

But I did have 34 hours and 30 minutes.

My first step was to approach the Office of Informational Technology (OIT). These are the computer gurus of VSU. If they say it can’t be done, then it can’t be done.

“It can’t be done,” they said.

I never liked being told something can’t be done.

Back to my office. If I was going to work this out, it was going to have to be on my own, and in a new way.

I began with a survey of what I already had.

I had a laptop, I had a video capture device, I had a camera and I had a microphone.

In short, I had the necessary hardware to digitize video. Now all I needed was a method of getting it up live on the web.

I had played around with streaming since 1997, when “reflectors” such as CUSeeMe were around. For those of you who are younger than this dinosaur, CUSeeMe was one of the first video conferencing web sites in existence. It was clunky, and the quality was horrible, but it was years ahead of it’s time.

We had tried streaming some games using UStream, but the upload speed was too slow, and the feed would crash.

So I began to search the web. I keyed in “streaming software,” “video streaming,” and any other combination I could think of.

People stopping by my office would ask what I was working on, and always leave with a puzzled look when I said “I’m looking for ice water.”

Then, at about 11:30 that night, I came upon a web site called Stickam (www.stickam.com).

Stickam is a social video conferencing site, sort of like a Facebook or MySpace for videos. I thought perhaps I could use it for a different purpose.

First, a little background:
Stickam.com was spawned from L.A.-based Advanced Video Communications, a maker of video conferencing tools for businesses largely in Asian markets. In early 2006, Advanced Video built a Flash video player to demonstrate its video capabilities. That tool morphed into Stickam, a so-called "widget" that people can plug into other social networks to enable live video. Eventually, the company decided to build up its own social network to compete with MySpace, Friendster and others.

Scott Flacks, Vice-President at Stickam, said that with its Flash-based player, Stickam can get better quality video feeds. But for now, the company's server base can only handle about 2,000 members streaming live video. Otherwise, its site can crash.

The site has private investors only and no means of revenue, so far.

Given that Stickam.com uses a Flash-based player, which means the video is delayed about 10-15 seconds while the incoming video is converted. That’s no big deal, and the end result is a better video than UStream or any other new media server has provided thus far.

I signed up for an account on Wednesday night. The account is free, and I could upload the Trojan logo for my photo. I left my “profile” blank, because I like the privacy, but you could fill it however much you like. Also, you need to provide an e-mail address, but Stickam allows you to opt out of getting e-mail updates or other e-mails.

By Thursday morning, I had received confirmation of my account, and I was ready to go live.

I hooked up the laptop, video capture device, camera and microphone and logged on to the internet. The wireless wasn’t working in the building, so I used a hard-wired setup. I prefer this to wireless anyway, because it just seems to be more stable.

Once I was on the ‘net, I went to stickam.com. After logging in, I clicked on the big orange “GO LIVE” button in the upper right-hand corner.

A warning will pop up alerting users that Stickam is intended for users over 14 years of age, and an option to limit the live chat.

Now this, at first, threw me. A live chat? But I clicked on the “START CHAT” button and held my breath.

As it turns out, Stickam calls its streaming sessions “chats.” What’s more, there’s a text chat that will run while you’re feeding the video stream. If you’ve ever used AIM, mIRC, or any other text chat sessions, you’ll immediately know how to use this chat function.

The web site will ask to access your camera and microphone, and clicking “ALLOW” begins the stream.

One other neat function is that you can hit the “RECORD” button at the bottom of the streaming window and the streaming event will automatically be archived on the Stickam server. Only the originator of the stream can do this, so don’t worry about someone hijacking your stream. There is also a limit of 60 minutes per file, so it would be wise to have a logical break point for long presentations.

I began the stream, and then called the football coach in his office, and he was able to watch me in my office. I then went out and watched him in my office. Yes, it was geeky, but it provided a test of the program.

The Flash conversion provided great quality video and accompanying sound.

I had found ice water, with less than a day to spare.

At 10 a.m. Thursday, we set everything up that morning, then ran right into a glitch. The promised Ethernet connection wasn’t working. There was no other choice. We had to go live using the wireless system.

As it turned out, the Flash software the site uses worked just as well with the wireless system as it did with the Ethernet connection. More than 85 people tuned in to watch the Kickoff Luncheon live, and by the next Monday, over 500 people had watched the archived file.

The Flash software provides for a slower upload speed with no loss in quality and sound, so schools with older systems should have no problem with putting their events up live.

The software also provides the originator to put captions on the live feed, so viewers can know who’s talking or the score of an event.

More events on Stickam are being discussed now, and the CIAA now wants the CIAA Basketball Tournament Tip-Off Show to be shown live over the web in February.