setting up to do video lessons for drumset with ichat av

drumhound · Post by **drumhound** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:13 pm

Hi!

I am a drum teacher looking to set things up for live video lessons with ichat av & or skype. Looking for the best solution.

I have managed to get the sound in & sound out set up by setting up a mix in cue mix & then connecting the headphone out from my 828mk2 into the line in on my mac pro.
I am monitoring via the headphone output.
This is working with ichat av but I am still getting some echo of my kit & occasional clipping where things cut out from time to time but then come back.
I am using headphones to monitor so there are no speakers involved on my end, just the phones.

I am hearing echo on both ends. I understand on the students end they may need to lower volume but if I am using closed isolated headphones I can••™t figure out why I am getting the echo of my kit.

initially I tried just selecting the 828 as the in & out in both preferences & I chat preferences but ichat would hang endlessly. So I tried the line in from the phones on the 828, then took the headphone output on the mac pro as my monitor mix & it worked.

So basically it••™s the echo & occasional dropping out or clipping that I am looking to correct. I also lowered the output of the 828 phones quite a bit. It helped but still clipping or dropping out at times.

If anyone has advice on how to really set all of this up in the best way so that it is viable to do on line live video lessons I would really appreciate the help! : )

Thanks for reading!

All my best!

Art

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:59 pm

Drop outs: you are likely dealing with bandwidth limitations. What kind of connection are you using? Unless you have some pretty hefty upstream speed you're likely going to run into this issue. The packets will drop when they can't be sent fast enough. I would imagine this will be a problem with any general purpose ISP connection (cable or DSL).

Clipping: you are dealign with the limitations of the compression used to get the sound & video over a relatively small pipeline. The compression scheme in iChat is optimized for speech and is likely choking on the extreme transients of the kit. It's just not geared for handling that cleanly.

HTH

drumhound · Post by **drumhound** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:42 am

Hi!

Thanks for the reply!

I feared that this was the case.

I am set up using a 802 wireless airport to a cable connection. So It's not even directly connected to cable. It goes to the airport & then cable.

I don't have the set up to connect the computer directly to cable internet & it would be problematic to get that happening, at least right now.

So it sounds like I am probably getting the best I can get via wireless connection to the cable internet connection.

Do you think Skype would be better? Or do you think ichat is the best suited as of now for this kind of thing.

It would be great to get it happening eventually in a way that was really suitable for lessons.

Thanks again for the help!

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:13 am

FReduce your upload bandwidth usage.

drumhound · Post by **drumhound** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:17 am

giles117 wrote:FReduce your upload bandwidth usage.

Thanks giles, I will try that also.

Have a great afternoon!

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:14 pm

I've never tried Skype, so I don't know. I would imagine that being VoIP you are again dealing with a technology optimized or speech.

I don't think it's a question of reducing upload usage - your upstream is capped by the ISP (usually about 1/3 of your downstream). So, it's really just a question of pipeline.

There is technology that would work for this, but it's expensive...and the person on the other end needs to have the proper equipment.

drumhound · Post by **drumhound** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:35 pm

sdemott wrote:I've never tried Skype, so I don't know. I would imagine that being VoIP you are again dealing with a technology optimized or speech.

I don't think it's a question of reducing upload usage - your upstream is capped by the ISP (usually about 1/3 of your downstream). So, it's really just a question of pipeline.

There is technology that would work for this, but it's expensive...and the person on the other end needs to have the proper equipment.

Steve,

Hi!

Thanks!

That's the other consideration of course! They have to have a set up that will handle all of this.

I guess as long as the limitations are understood & students are benefiting from the lessons with the quality as it is, it's the best I can hope for right now with my set up as it is.

Also with the variable of the set up that my students have quality will vary & it wont work for everyone.

Just keeping my fingers crossed that eventually the technology that would really make this viable with the ability to have audio compression within the software optimized for all instruments is eventually available in the same way ichat is available for speech now. It would be great! I'm sure it will get there eventually!

Thanks again for the help.

Art