It just doesn't work

Hello, friends!

It just occurred to me that a lot of things have changed in just a few years. When I was growing up if we wanted to communicate with my aunt that lives in a different city, we had to talk fast on the phone, because long distance was very expensive. If we wanted to communicate something longer we'd have to write a letter, because it was impossible to afford a talk of more than 20 minutes. Letters took forever to arrive (that hasn't changed).
There were no fax machines, no internet (for the most part), no cellphones, no SMSs. Only rich people had computers.

Today we have email, Twitter, Facebook, Skype, webcams, netbooks, laptops, tablets, smartphones... We can contact anybody anywhere in the world. For those that don't have computers or internet connection there are internet cafés. Long distance calls are quite cheap nowadays. Buying things online from China and getting them shipped home is not something out of the ordinary.

So we grew a lot closer as a world, but whenever somebody mentions they are in a long distance relationship the default answer is "it just doesn't work".

Lack of physical contact is annoying and it makes things more difficult, but isn't it time to revise that answer and adapt it to modern times? Long distance relationships were obviously a lot more difficult to keep not many years ago.

I communicate with my girlfriend pretty much every day now. We listen to each other's voice and we can record videos or take as many pictures as we want, in high definition. Long distance relationships are not what they used to.

So, I think that whenever you find someone that's in a long distance relationship, before giving the default answer of "it just doesn't work", be happy that they have someone that cares for them and that loves them. Some of them do work and technology helps a lot with that!

Streaming with VLC

Hello, friends!

Since I got a comment asking how to stream with VLC, I'm taking a break from the relationship posts to write a tutorial on how to do that.

First step, install VLC if it's not installed. Second, open VLC.

This is what VLC looks like when you open it.

 Then you click on Media menu and you pick Streaming.

This is the streaming dialog.

Once the streaming dialog opens up, you have to click on the Capture Device tab. There, you have to complete the Video device name option with your webcam. I don't know how this is on Windows, but on GNU/Linux I put the default webcam device which is /dev/video0. You can always stream a file if you want.
 

Pick your webcam to stream.

 Then you click on the Stream button a the bottom. That opens up a few options for you to configure. The source is already done for you and the type in GNU/Linux would be v4l or v4l2. So we go to the Destinations option instead.

I leave this as is.

In the destinations, I click on "Display locally" so I can see myself while streaming and then I pick HTTP in the combo selector. Then I click Add.

Where do you want to stream to?

Here I pick the port and the path. You could call the path /stream.mkv or /stream.asf depending on the type of container you pick (more of that on the next step). The port should be a port that you can open on your router (8080 is the default).

Pick a port and a Path.

 Once that's done, you have to pick the Transcoding options. There are some profiles already prepared, but you can create your own.

If you decide to create your own you have to name your profile and pick a container (VLC calls it "Encapsulation"). I use an mkv container but do check what works for you.

Pick your container.

For codec I pick V8, but again, pick what you like the most. You can also pick the size of the streaming and the FPS. Depending on your bandwidth you want the size and the FPS to be higher or lower. Just play with the settings and see what works for you and the person receiving the streaming.

Pick your codec.

Then you can save your new Profile for streaming if you decided to create one. After that's done, click on the Stream button once again and your camera should turn on and you should be able to see what your camera is showing. To let the other person see your streaming you provide them with a URL like this: http://YourIP:ThePort/StreamPath.container. For example: http://127.0.0.1:8080/stream.mkv (127.0.0.1 is localhost, obviously). To find out your IP use ipconfig in a Windows terminal or ifconfig in a GNU/Linux or OSX terminal.

That's it. Let me know if you try it and it doesn't work for you or if you have any doubts or suggestions. If you try it and it works for you, I'd also like to hear it!

PS: There's a poll on the right of this blog. Vote on it if you haven't yet!

When bad software is an advantage

Hello, friends!

My girlfriend and I one day decided we wanted to see each other besides just chatting. Unfortunately, taking a plane every weekend is kind of outside our budget, go figure...
We both use free software, so after trying different clients we settled for amsn to cam. Why go for a proprietary network? Simple: both my girlfriend and I have horrible connections; the cam implementation in the Windows Live Messenger network is just horrible, it goes frame-by-frame. Luckily, this was an advantage for us, because we wouldn't be transmitting or receiving as much data and it wouldn't make our connections choke. Seeing each other frame-by-frame was better than not seeing each other.

Jabber/XMPP works like a charm, really smooth and everything... on a normal connection. For us it gets all pixelized fast.

Unfortunately, Microsoft changed the protocol for their cam exchange in Windows Live Messenger, so we have to wait until the new version of amsn comes out.

In the meantime, I'm using VLC to stream to her. At least she can see me!

Do you guys have any suggestion on what to try? Only free software, please (ie, not Skype because it's proprietary). I was going to try SIP with Ekiga / Qutecom, anybody has a good / bad experience with that?