Cameras

IP

The obvious solution for webcasting would seem to be IP cameras. (This kind of camera acts like a mini web server and sends the video through your router or switch either wired or wireless.) The problem is that these cameras tend to have very primitive software generally allowing only 11 fps into some kind of weird proprietory output format. Then comes the major problem of how to switch the output from 2+ of these cameras into 1 stream. You can't just use a mechanical switch to flip from camera to camera.

Analog

So, we are left with old fashioned analog cameras with their susceptibility to noise.

• 09/03/2009 - John Beales: Using VLC to transcode an Axis Camera’s video stream, and stream it out again