• Introduction
• UpStage v3
• Introduction
• UpStage Team
• Technical Information
• How to Help UpStage
• Audience
• Audience View
• Audience Chat
• Audience Interactivity
• Players
• Logging In
• Player Profile
• Player View
• On-stage Player Tools
• Avatar Tools
• Audio Palette
• Drawing Palette
• Speech and Text Chat
• / Commands
• Media Management
• The Workshop Interface
• Creating and Editing Players
• Creating and Editing Stages
• Uploading Media
• Browse Media
• Edit Media
• Creating Media
• Creating Graphics for UpStage
• Creating Audio for UpStage
• Streaming
• Introduction to streaming
• Video tutorial
• Sending a stream
• Red5 Publisher interface
• FMLE
• VLC (Linux)
• Creating a stream avatar
• Prerecorded streams
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Text2Speech Voices
• Troubleshooting

Sending a stream

You need to have access to a streaming server in order to send an audio-visual stream from your computer to UpStage. 

Please note: this manual is not about how to install a streaming server; for information this and on installing the UpStage video hack version, please click here. Normally you will not need to install your own streaming server, just have access to one.

The information in this manual is based on the Red5 streaming server; this is not the only option, but it is the one that we have tested and found to work well.  

Stream server name 

The Red5 server will have an rtmp URL that will look something like this (with "example.com" being the URL of the host server):

 rtmp://red5.example.com/oflaDemo

or: 

 rtmp://example.com/oflaDemo 

You will need to enter this into the "Stream server" field when you create your stream avatar in UpStage (see the chapter Creating a stream avatar), and you will also need to enter it into the streaming application that you use to send the stream from your computer.

Streaming client or publisher interface 

There are two ways to send a stream from your computer to a Red5 server:

1. Using the Red5 Publisher - the browser interface provided by the Red5 server.
2. Using a streaming client, such as VLC (Linux) or Flash Media Live Encoder (Mac & Windows).

Using a streaming client rather than the Red5 publisher gives more control over the quality and other variables of your stream. It also allows you to save the settings in a profile, so that when you reopen the client to restart a stream, all your settings are automatically loaded and you do not have to enter them all again. 

Whichever option you use, you will need to:

1. enter the server URL (rtmp:// ... )
2. enter the stream name, exactly the same as it is for the UpStage avatar
3. select the appropriate video and audio devices
4. create a connection to the server
5. start your stream.

It is easy to make small errors in any of these steps that will stop your stream from working. For example, a space at the end of the server URL will prevent the connection from being made. If your stream does not work, please carefully check all of these settings to be sure you have everything right, no extraneous spaces or small typos.

This manual provides configuration instructions for the Red5 Publisher interface (no download required), VLC and the Flash Media Live Encoder (FMLE). For the latter two, you will need to first download and install the application; then follow the instructions in this manual.