Webcasting Recommendation?
 

Can anyone recommend a low-cost or free webcasting solution? I'm a member of a very small non-profit group, and some members are asking if we can do live webcasts of the monthly meetings (to minimize their travel time and expense).

We are looking at one or 2 hours per month, and no more than 10 people on the webcast.

Any low-cost suggestions?

Audio-only or video, too? Do you need screen sharing or just to have the people able to talk to each other?

I'll join in on this - we're looking at replacing GoToWebinar and the holy grail for us would be a solution that allows the playing of a video with audio over computers so that the participant computers see the video and hear the audio through their sound cards, not through their phone lines.

Seems that all the vendors I'm researching are hep on showing live video of people's faces (booooooooring) but don't address the idea of showing a short training video with audio passthrough.

We would prefer audio and video over the web. (Audio-only service is available from Skype / SkypeOut.) An ability to block incoming audio would be a plus, for those times when someone puts you on hold and do not realize that they have music-on-hold.

We do not need screen sharing. I guess it would be cool, but our presentations are brought in on a laptop and its video-out port connects to a video projector. My thoughts were along the line of pointing a webcam at the projection screen sometimes, pointing it at the presenter other times.

Have you looked at Adobe's Acrobat Connect Pro?

At Adobe.com I see a free version for up to 3 participants, a $39/mo version for up to 15, and a $375/mo version for heavy-duty users.

I'm hoping for something less expensive than $39, yet with a comparable number of participants.

www.dimdim.com

It may provide what you're looking for - for free. Unfortunately, it still doesn't do "holy grail" for me (it'll pass the audio portion of a WMV file but it freezes on the first frame of the video on participant's computers).

Are you looking for webcasting or webconferencing? I've also been researching inexpensive webcasting options.

If all you want is one-way audio-video so people can see and hear what's happening in the room (i.e., no screensharing or live conferencing), then there are a handful of free youtube-like sites that are designed for live video:

http://justin.tv
http://ustream.tv
http://mogulus.com
http://stickam.com

I haven't tested them all yet, but have played a bit with justin.tv and it is REALLY easy to use. You simply turn on a webcam, go to the website and click the big "broadcast" button in the corner. You can get higher quality by using Adobe Flash Media Encoder for Windows or Quicktime Broadcaster for Mac instead of the site's more basic web-based broadcaster, but if you broadcast in H.264 it doesn't archive your video so you'd have to record it and upload it separately to a video sharing site after the fact if you want people to be able to watch the video after the meeting occurs (the web-based broadcaster automatically archives your "episode" so people can retrieve it on-demand afterwards).

When I tried justin.tv, there was a delay of a few seconds, so you won't be able to use it as a live conferencing solution, even with a telephone conference call (if users are both dialed into your conference call and watching on justin.tv, the delay in the webcast's audio is going to throw them off, and eventually create a feedback loop if their phone picks up the webcast's audio). But for a simple, one-way a/v webcast, it seems like a great, free solution. The others look promising, too, although some seem more complex (particularly mogulus).