The major problem for stand-alone installation was that one needed to initialize the playback via remote control, and after that the player will smoothly loop video. This open-PLAYER hack solves that problem and enables automatic playback of video(s) on the enclosed USB drive.

Software needed is enhanced WDTV firmware WDLXTV, Optware for WDTV, eiri and custom theme skeleton.

Luisa Rabbia’s Travels with Isabella and Cliff Evans’ Bare Life run now using this WDTV hack, as well as all VOS videos.

A co-production by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Ovation TV will be the first in a series of collaborations between cultural institutions and the cable arts network to create programming intended to raise the profiles of both partners.As part of a long-term initiative to be announced today, the network and MOCA have produced a 10-minute video about MOCA’s upcoming exhibition “Collecting Collections,” opening Feb. 10. The video includes interviews with art collectors, donors and artists and will be part of the exhibition as well as air on Ovation.

The MOCA video will be shown not only during the “Collecting Collections” exhibition in MOCA’s Reading Room but also on the museum’s website. Concurrently with the exhibition, Ovation will make the piece available on the TV network, its website and VOD (video on demand). Ovation TV serves 25 million subscribers nationwide, with satellite carriage on DirecTV (Channel 274) and Dish Network in the Los Angeles area.

open-PLAYER has built-in syndication feature, what could enable galleries and artists to submit their videos (in form of an RSS feed) for potential air over TV networks, in full broadcast quality, but protecting version and copy right integrity.

The text explains how to use open source MPEG production suite FFMpeg to create and serve FLASH (6+) compatible live streams.

Macromedia Flash MX package is the tool suggested by the manufacturer for live streaming. But the default procure is far from straightforward and user friendly, so very few dedicated Flash enthusiasts go that way. Not to forget that Flash Communication Server MX is not free in any meanining of the word “free” …

So we will briefly explain how to encode A/V input in Flash compatible stream, using open source tools.

== 2. Prerequisites ==

* Linux box with (BTTV compatible) video and audio capture cards. CPU power is not critical: example described here is assembled on 800 Mhz Pentium computer.

* FFMpeg ( http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net ) installed. Main parts of the package are programs ffmpeg (encoder) and ffserver (server). Documentation is available on FFMpeg site.

== 3. Procedure ==

=== 3.1. Server Side: Encoder and Server ===

FFMpeg settings are controlled through ffserver.conf file. The following sections instruct ffmpeg to encode video into an example live Flash stream (SWF format):

Feed feed1.ffm Format swf VideoFrameRate 8 VideoBitRate 256 VideoSize 320x240 VideoGopSize 6 VideoCodec flv VideoIntraOnly AudioChannels 1 AudioSampleRate 44100 AudioBitRate 64

Then the address for the streams would be of the form:

http://the_address_of_the_server:ffserver_port/stream_name