Livestream or Record? Musings.

Question & thinking out loud about the dissemination of the great SL concerts we have at Music Island:

If I have to choose between livestreaming or recording an SL concert, which one is better to focus my resources on? I'm wondering because one person really can't do both well I don't think.

Yesterday people attending the Champagne Rain concert were asking me about whether a recording of the concert would be available because they had friends who couldn't get in. When I said that it was on livestream now but not being recorded in entirety they went "Oh Shit, so and so has logged off now and I can't tell them that". Hmmmm. Seems like there's been a communication failure there despite my announcing the Livestream before concerts and occasionally reminding people via group notice. On the other hand Live stream is a new feature to Music Island concerts and maybe they will get onto it if I keep it up. I also have thought about putting a Livestream logo onstage with a URL connection so that people visiting the sim will know the concerts are available on the web (most concerts).

Livestream increases the potential audience for an event and it doesn't add TOO much extra work time. I have to set up a separate broadcast computer, check the sound and then zoom back and forth periodically to change camera angles and then it's done. The main thrust of the exercise is to get around the small audience limits in Second Life and my hope is that it will help expand the numbers of musicians performing in SL and also be an appealing facet of any mixed reality project. I cannot use the broadcast software in "record" mode while in Second Life because it gobbles so much bandwidth that SL fps slows to a crawl (especially in a crowded concert setting). This makes what you are recording look terrible. (Talk about the observer effect :-)

Screen capture in another computer running FRAPS involves capturing a variety of angles and views of the concert with a view to post production editing in my (new) Sony Vegas software. I now have to means to create much better videos BUT it takes a LOT of work to do so. The raw capture files are also HUGE. But the films create a long lasting record of events that can be shared to inform and promote artists, Music Island and SL music in general.

Both require artist permissions which generally are not witheld but I would say most are more enthusiastic about Livestream than recordings but that could just be that my early recordings were pretty crappy (archival only really).

I COULD decide on a case by case basis, but I wonder if that might not lead to some feeling shortchanged and hoping for both a film and a broadcast.

Is it possible to do both? Possibly but not well. I am currently running 3 computers (1. in SL hosting concert, 2. in SL & broadcasting concert, 3. not in SL but monitoring and tweaking Livestream) and I can see how I COULD do all of these things with my current three computers by monitoring on my hosting computer by adding a screen & turning off SL sound. Then I would do screen capture on a third computer with a 3rd logged on avatar. Another monitor on my main computer would help. But really what I need to do this is a 4th computer and an interested helper.