Softron's MovieStreamer HLS is an audio/video streaming application designed for Mac users looking to stream professional grade audio and video to the Net. MovieStreamer HLS accepts video from input devices that support Apple's AV Foundation and encodes the stream into HTTP Live Streaming at multiple bitrates to multiple destinations. MovieStreamer HLS is Live streaming made easy. Select your source (the video card you will use), the destinations (where you will record your stream to), the Output formats (the bitrate, resolutions that you want to use) and click on the record button. MovieStreamer HLS will create all that is required for the HLS format. No need to be a streaming specialist to use MovieStreamer HLS as it comes with Recommended Presets that you can use very easily. Just start the application and tick which Preset you want to use. When you are ready, just start streaming. Recommended Presets cannot be modified so you can always use them as a reference. These settings are those recommended by Apple for the HTTP Live Streaming best practice. Most users will be satisfied with the Recommended Presets but in case you want to fine tune your settings, you can just build your own in the Custom Presets. You will be able to set the Resolution, the bitrate, the H264 Profile and if decide whether you want to decrease the frame rate or not. You can send your HLS streams to multiple destinations. You can record onto local storage, i.e. any mounted volume on your Mac, which can be either an SMB or an AFP volume. You can also automatically upload to an FTP server or to your Amazon S3 account and can use multiple destinations so that you have a backup solution for your Live streams. Integration with Amazon S3 is built right into MovieStreamer HLS. As Amazon itself defines it, "Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure, fast, inexpensive infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers". With a free account, you already get 5GB of free storage. In addition to providing everything you need to create an HTTP Live Stream, you can also record a backup copy of your encoding to a regular QuickTime file. We have optimized this feature so that it doesn't use more processing power - it uses the highest resolution chosen to create the QuickTime file without any need for additional encoding. When talking about streaming video, there are many things that you need to consider. The most important is of course "How to reach to the maximum number of viewers?" The answer to that question is to use the format that is the most widely accepted. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to that. If you want to stream to iOS devices, you have no other choice but to use HTTP Live Streaming. But HLS is not supported on all devices or by all browsers e.g. Firefox or Chrome). Thanks to JW Player Premium from LongTail Video, it is now possible to have the best of both worlds. Use the premium version (not the free version), and it will rewrap your HLS streams to Flash on the fly so all Flash compatible device will be able to watch your stream.
