Hey Muris, I saw you wrote something about webcam live lessons...so can you please write how does that work? DOes it have latency or something.... how do you manage to keep up audio and video synced while playing etc...

Thanks!

Good question Ivan!

I usually don't have latency issues cause I'm on pretty nice ADSL.
But student must have good connection as well or my alone is useless.

Andrew can confirm this:
Couple weeks ago I bought new web cam cause I broke old one .
So I wanted to test it,Andrew was online and we started.
We had pretty big latency issue,I was worried a lot!!!
And tomorrow I figured out why,
on another machine(PC or Mac,not sure) my brother was doing some Rapidshare thing,
both download and upload PLUS I was uploading A LESSON as well

You do webcam lessons? how cool !!!

Well yeah,why not.

I think my guitar teacher is about to get the sack..

Haha is a webcam lesson part of the GMC package?

We(crew) have discussed about it and I'm sure
it'll be one of new features to come in the future.

Man, GMC just keeps getting better and better! GMC rules!

Well you know, I think webcam lessons are a fantastic idea! I really feel like ive wasted alot of money going to my live instructor as I usually end up showing him everything I have learnt here It makes far more sense to find a "live" instrcutor via the web as your not restricted by who is is in your local area

Absolutely!
Webcam lessons are the best!

Well this has been an enlightening experience !

Whoever came up with this idea, hats off to them

Seems like Ivan opened Pandora's Box

Well Ivan is a pretty cool guy

Getting live webcam lessons will be awesome.. it will be like an enhanced "chat with an instructor" experience

I see Henrik is in the board,let's hear some expert's thoughts!!

Well, this is certainly on the "want to do list", but nothing is at all decided. If you want us to move this up on the prioirty list, please post requests for it and we'll look into it more

On a personal note, I think it would be waaay cool to do something like this!

Well I for one would much rather spend my money here than through any of the local instructor in my area.

It is really just throwing money down the drain I put aside $30 a week for live instruction and its not nearly as great as GMC

I agree that this would be way cool! We will have it, no doubt...!

Also it will require a cool and challenging technical solution - with one (or more) streaming servers!

Also the best think is that everyone of our instructors is just awsome - there is no question this would be amaizingly powerful

It will be great feature indeed Looking forward to it

Did I say GMC rules???

Guess I did.

I too like this idea very much. Perhaps something of a virtual tutoring could take place, meaning that both the student and instructor are on webcams and can see each other. That way, Guru Muris for instance can tell if I'm playing those darned 32th triplet legato runs properly.

But yeah, definitely something I would give an upward thumb!

Oh the is gonna be so cool live webcam lessons i better buy a webcam then

This sounds really cool.

Wow this turned out to be a great topic

Thanks for the reply Muris and guys, and Muris can you tell us what speed your line is (according to speednet.com) please. I must confess I am very intersted to know how the whole thing works, and to see this great feature one day on the GMC as well.

this will be a great idea if we start live lessons

This sound extremely cool and awesome! Can't wait for it

Yep,it'll be really awesome when we get this on GMC

Ivan,my connection is ADSL 2048/256 kbps

So will I need a webcam as well? Or just you?

I gave few classes without even playing a guitar.
So I was only watching a student and giving advices etc,go figure.

I think it would be great if we could get a Flash Media Server setup.

We could stream to the server by using a program called Flash Media Encoder. It doesn't require a lot of bandwidth and the program is free to download. The quality you get with it is also pretty amazing.

Go Here! This site is run off of a Flash Media Server. They also did something quite cool. Instead of relying on a java based chatroom, they implemented a browser-based IRC client. I believe they're hosting their own IRC server as well. This allows for an unlimited number of users and an unlimited number of rooms. Don't know if you guys know what IRC is or not.

Also another thing about the Flash Media Server...it allows more than 1 person to connect to your webcam without stealing all the bandwidth from the person serving up the video.

The downside:
1) It's not free to set this up.
2) streaming video = more bandwidth usage.

I have an idea on how to set this up, however, I've never had a client that has asked for such a detailed web application, so i've never done it.


btw my connection is 8192/512 kbps if you guys need some testing.

So far I've done it using msn.

It's good to know you have some experience in this field Kyle,
might be of great help when GMC starts implementing the feature

I Think WIll Be A great Idea, I've Fast ADSL and Powerfull Webcam (aka an old videocamera modded, no webcam on the market has the same quality! )

Sounds nice,may I have your cam then Joe?

Muris, what are your experiences with webcam lessons? Do you have ANY latency at all?

I can send video and audio streams over the net too over the msn, but there is a latency, so no jamming, but I think the lessons could be done, different trip from ordinary video lessons thats for sure..

I spoke with my uncle in L.A. and never had latency issues, sometimes some frames "drop" but only the image...but i think that a dedicated streaming server will solve all the problems!

No muris, you can't!

If you used a Flash Media Server then the latency would be determined by how fast the uploaders bandwidth was.

If you have a decent upload speed....4-5 seconds would be the max. If you're on dialup...be prepared for at least a minute.

With a streaming server, latency is cut in half. All downloads of the stream are then handled by the server instead of your computer.

OHH

It´s perfect for group lessons on a set topic, in muy case ADSL here let mi Upload at 25kps which is ok with audio bud kinda sucks on video depending the resolution. In my case I can see for example most youtube vids with out any pause for buffering.
If it´s going to happen kinda soon Its a good idea to gather between instructors to jam through webcam, alo I remembered that there was aclient for jamming called ninjajam or something.