Currently, bear’s IRC bot (wicket) responds to ‘what is cam’ with the following information: “For the most part, Chris usually relies on a Canon GL2 DV camera connected via FireWire for video and a Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser mic for audio. However, there are times when he relies on a Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision and/or Apple’s iSight for A/V.”

Since receiving the 16′ FireWire cable, I’ve set up the GL2 DV camera to run through my Mac mini for the home office live stream (using Cam Twist to display the URL and live time in the footer of my video feed). Still trying to figure out how to rotate sponsor logos in there, though. No matter, this new setup certainly beats the old one — largely because I don’t use the Mac mini for much else. On the road, I’m likely to rely on the iSight built into the MacBook.

I was getting ready to head to bed tonight (honestly), when I decided to refresh my streaming window. Lo and behold, I discovered that ustream JUST upgraded their video streaming interface to provide much more information and control:

You now have two video preview windows: one for what you see, and one for what the server sees (so that you might detect when the stream has stopped working). Note that you can now turn both of these previews off to save bandwidth! Nothing else notable about this upgrade, to my knowledge - although the font is damn near illegible at this point size.

[tags]live video, streaming media[/tags]