Rfalconcam Forum

So, I gather there's been some change in the streaming chat. The pop-out goes to the "old" chat which has something about where we will be after Saturday-answer: same place as usual.

When I try to click on "say something" I get the message "Create a channel to join the chat".

Please advise. Thanks.

Due to Ustream dropping free streaming, we are no longer using Ustream chat. We are in the process of switching to YouTube Live streaming. That is until we can find something better (if there is such a thing). You will need a google account to chat on YouTube. If you use gmail, log in with your gmail address.

If you refresh the Rfalconcam streaming video page, you will see that the pop out links are gone. Fortunately YouTube chat has a built-in link to pop out its own window. The embedded video windows, however,  do not pop out at this time. Actually, only Channel 1 is embedded. The other 3 YouTube channels cannot be embedded until we get 1000 subscribers. They will need to be viewed on their respective YouTube pages until then.

As mentioned above, we are transitioning to YouTube. During this process, there will be a mix of YouTube and Ustream channels. Everything should be switched to YouTube by the end of the week.

Thank you!

What will it take in $$ to upgrade the video quality?

about $1000 per channel

Just posting this here to note where I am with the change. I realize not everything is tweaked yet.

Dumpsterkitty15​ Very strange chat stuff. I can log in and reply as normal on my old (XP) work computer on chrome. I get spinning circle of doom on chrome on my phone.

Dumpsterkitty15​ I can log in on my work computer on firefox, but it doesn't stay embedded-it opens youtube which is blocked at work.

Dumpsterkitty15​ At home (win7) on firefox when I try to click on "say something" I get the message "Create a channel to join the chat". Clicking does nothing and goes nowhere.

Dumpsterkitty15​ And I get circle of doom on chrome at home like I do on my phone.

Dumpsterkitty15​ I have not tried my work laptop yet

Dumpsterkitty15​ So...it's not that we aren't here-it just still needs some bugs worked out.

It works on Chrome on my Macs and Windows 7&10. It works on Safari on Macs and iOS. It works on Firefox on Macs, Windows 7&10, and Linux. It does not work on IE 11.

If you get the "create a channel" message, close the window, log out/in gmail, and come back. That should work.

I'm thinking of replacing YouTube chat with our Forum chat. Requires a forum account. Most people here already have one, but a few don't. New visitors won't either.

​Also looking into non-YouTube stream providers. Most are either junk or want to charge an arm and a leg.

I have 3 main complaints about YouTube:

1. Chat history is pretty much non-existent.

2. When a live stream is interrupted for more than a few seconds, the stream stops and a new one starts. The new one gets a new link. The old link points to the old stream, which is now a recorded video. Our streaming video page then needs to be updated to include the new links AND everyone needs to refresh the page in their browser. Otherwise they'll be watching a recorded video instead of a live stream.

3. YouTube won't let us embed Channels 2-4 into our streaming page until we get 1000 subscribers on Channel 1. We currently have 89.

I tried all that at home-nada. I haven't spent an excess amount of time working on it. I haven't tried opening the stream directly in youtube at home. I haven't had any problem getting into chats on other streams directly on youtube.

I think it will be OK once we figure out the glitches. We do pick up a lot of non-members on the chat during the active season. Most people are pretty savvy about using youtube. From what I gather, it's the place to be now ;)

There is a way to get the link to be permanent. I have no idea how it's done, but the great dane cams I watch on explore.org are streamed through youtube and the links are the same even after a power outage/cams-offline. They only change if explore does a hard restart of the channel.

It might be only available after X amount of viewers like the embedding.

What's the link to the great dane stream on YouTube? I'll look into it.

I have the separate links at home. Will post later

This is the main website

https://explore.org/livecams/service-dog-project/great-danes-puppy-nursery-cam (https://explore.org/livecams/service-dog-project/great-danes-puppy-nursery-cam)

This is the direct youtube link for the nursery cam

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi8rq-t_PBc#)

Each of the 7 cams goes to a unique live stream. I believe all their cams do-there are zillions.

The nursery cam has been running on youtube since July 2016 despite numerous outages both at the farm and on the explore main site. There is a post from explore that their entire system will be offline tonight for system maintenance so I don't know if this youtube link will still be live tomorrow. During previous explore.org outages we have still been able to watch directly on youtube.

Addendum: their embedded chat runs through disqus. During hurricane Florence they had the youtube chat running on the Cape Fear cams on youtube (not embedded on their main site). One cam was readable, the other was zooming so fast you couldn't follow it.

As I thought, they are using their own custom javascript to embed the live stream instead of using a hard-coded link. That's not going to be any help until I get a chance to reverse engineer their javascript code. Yippee.

So they are not embedding YouTube chat on their streaming page. That's where I think we should go too. Disqus is one option and our Forum chat is another. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Disqus is easy for new visitors because they can log in using FaceBook, Twitter, or Gmail accounts, but it's harder to moderate (keep trolls out). Forum chat is easy to moderate because it requires an account with a registration process that prevents spammers and trolls from getting in, but it requires new visitors to register for an account before they can post. It's also not a very modern interface.

Either one is better than YouTube chat.

Disqus can have its challenges, but it has actually worked pretty well. It tends to get wonky when the thread gets huge-duplicate posts, ancient ghost posts popping up-but I doubt we'd ever get that big. There are a bunch of moderators who can clean things up when it gets off track. It keeps the comments forever and you can go back and see replies to your posts.

They have tried several times to engineer their own chat but keep coming back to disqus.

Good news! I found a permanent link to the YouTube live streams. I have updated our streaming video page to reflect this.

I will look into switching our video chat to disqus. That should solve the history problem.

Now we just need everyone to subscribe to our YouTube channel so we can get qualified to embed all 4 channels into our page.

The video chat has been moved to Disqus. Check it out on our streaming video page (http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main/streamView.php).

Sweet! There are times it can be challenging, but I doubt we'll get to the sort of volume that overwhelms the system.