About this Webcast

OVERVIEW: If you have ever watched a video on CNN, MSNBC, or YouTube then you've watched streaming video. For our Live streaming we are using Windows Media technology. To view and hear the video stream you will need to have Windows Media Player v9 or greater installed on your computer. Windows Media player is supported on the mac. Some of our webcasts have slides and text-based chat features along side the player. These additional technologies work within the browser and do not require any additional installation. You can test your Windows Media here on our event site. BROWSERS: This site is functional for grade A browsers, as defined by Yahoo. Please, if possible, upgrade to the latest version of your favorite browser. While we have tested our event sites for IE6 we have had users report problems. Please upgrade to the latest IE for the best user experience possible or consider installing Mozilla Firefox. INTERNET CONNECTION: Video streaming uses from 150kbps to 300kbps of your download bandwidth at a fairly constant rate, thus a broadband connection is required. It's also important to note that multiple users sharing a connection will each be consuming bandwidth and may affect the download of the video stream. For example, if you have a T1 connection capable of 1500kbps and have 10 people viewing the webcast from the same network there will be internal network congestion and your users will likely experience problems. You can test your bandwidth speed at one of several available sites. Speakeasy speedtest closely mirrors our video distribution network in the United States. Choose the server closest to you. Download speed should be greater than 300kbps for optimal viewing. REGISTRATION: You need to have a registration email, which includes links and a unique code. You should have received this email within 24 hours of purchasing the webcast. If you or your group has not purchased you should visit here to get signed up. If you did purchase and did not receive an email with registration links, you can have it resent by returning to the home page and clicking in the orange box right below the menu. Once you have the email, you MUST distribute it to everyone in your organization that needs access, up to your registration limit. Accounts should be created as immediately as possible so that our technicians can provision enough resources to serve all of our users. Keep the email convenient so that you will always have links to find your way back to this event site. You should also consider bookmarking this site. If you have forgotten your password you can proceed to the login page and click on the 'forgot password' link. If you did not receive a registration email and the above instructions don't help please contact us so that we can assist you. ARCHIVE ACCESS (re-broadcast): On-demand access will also use Windows Media streaming; or alternately, Flash video technology which will require the Adobe Flash player. Over 95% of our users already have Flash installed so it's very unlikely that you will experience any problems with this format.

Video Streaming Technical Support

DISPLAY PROPERTIES: We recommend that you adjust your screen size to a minimum size of 1024 x 768 or higher. In Windows, this is done by opening [my computer] -> [control panel] -> [display] ->, or you can click with your right mouse button on your desktop and select "Properties" or "Personalize (Vista)". (In Vista click on Display Settings) Then, click the settings tab and adjust the DESKTOP AREA slider to at least 1024 x 768 or larger. For the best video quality, you should also maximize your display colors settings to true color or millions of colors. This is also accessed through Display in the control panel. Projectors and External Monitors: Using a projection unit to show the webcast to a great is a great idea. Some computer's video hardware will automatically detect the presense of an active Windows Media player and output the video from the player to the full screen (edge-to-edge) of the external monitor. This will happen if the video mirroring feature of your video card is enabled. You can disable this option from your advanced display properties. (Windows users: Right click the desktop and select properties or from the control panel select display properties.) Nvidia refers to the mirror feature as "Full screen video", ATI calls it "Theater mode" and Matrox calls it PureVideo/DVDMax. On laptop computers should have a toggle key to change monitor profiles. Usually you hold down the function key [fn] and click one of the function keys. (On IBM ThinkPad use the F7 key).Video mirroring may work for your audience but if slides and chat are available video mirroring will impede your audience from seeing those features. Video modes that will allow users to see the full desktop would be normal desktop mirroring and extending your desktop to the other monitor, in which case you would simply drag your browser window to the other monitor or projector. On the settings tab in display properties, Check "extend my desktop to this monitor" (there should be an image of two monitors labeled 1 and 2. You can also drag the monitor images to match your physical set up.

EXTERNAL WEBSITES Video Support at WindowsMedia.com Windows Media Support for Mac users Windows Media Firewall Information Windows Media Problems: Upon loading the webcast page, I can see the slides, but don't see or hear anything. Upon loading the webcast page, I can see the slides, I can hear people speaking, but I don't see anything. Upon loading the webcast page, I can see the slides, I can see the video, but I cannot hear anything. I see the video trying to connect, but it says "Closed, The Server could not find the requested file, The Server is Busy, or A General Error has occured." My Player gets stuck buffering for a long time and the video fails to start playing. I can hear audio, but the picture quality is bad. I have some other problem you haven't addressed here. Windows Media for Mac: Microsoft does have Windows Media Player 9for Mac. Download it here. Also you can watch Windows Media content via the Apple QuickTime player with a free plug-in called Flip4Mac. Click here to download a this free software. You should use Safari browser when using either of these players. I open up the page, I can see the slides, but don't see or hear anything. There are a few possible causes for this problem. Your Plugin is not properly configured - this means if you're using Netscape, try Internet Explorer. If you are using IE, try Netscape. If neither works, then download the newest version of the player and reinstall. If you are on a corporate network you may need to get a System Admin to help you. You don't have the player installed at all. Download it and install it. If your player looked like it tried to connect and couldn't, then you must be behind a very restrictive firewall. There is nothing more we can do about it from our end. This is somehting that will have to be handled by your IT people, who will have to open up a port for you. I can hear audio, but I don't see a picture. The player requires codecs to decompress the video and display it in the player, your player either doesn't have the right codec, or is misbehaving, try restarting your computer and try again. If you use Windows Media Player, you might need to adjust your internet security settings to a lower security. Open up Internet Explorer, in the menu bar (File, Edit, View....) Select Tools, then Internet Options, click the Security Tag and Click the button labelled Default Level, then move the Slider to Medium or lower. Try installing the latest Windows Media Player, you may have just installed it a couple weeks ago, or a month ago, but these releases change periodically to fix bugs and mistakes in the player. You may have a bad version. After you install a new version always restart your computer, especially when installing Windows Media Player. I open up the page, I can see the slides, I see the video, but I cannot hear anything. On a Windows system, there are three places to control the volume. A. Your computer speakers (Do you have speakers or headphones attached? (We get this one more than you'd think.) Do you have them on? Is the volume turned up?) B. Your "System" volume may be muted or turned down. Access your system volume by the little speaker icon near your clock in the system tray, click on it once and you'll see the volume slider pop up, make sure it's turned up and the the mute checkbox is unchecked. C. Your player volume, click on the Test your Player link, when the application opens, adjust the volume and click the mute button on and off to see if you can get audio. If this fails, uninstall your player (Click on Start--Settings--Control Panel--Add/Remove Programs, restart your computer, go download it again and reinstall the new version, then restart your computer. If this fails, please contact us and we will try to help resolve your issue. I see the video trying to connect, but it says "Closed, The Server could not find the requested file, The Server is Busy, or A General Error has occured." This could be a firewall issue. Many large corporations and government organizations have very advanced firewalls and will block streaming video, even over HTTP. My Player gets stuck buffering for a long time and the video fails to start playing. You're probably experiencing net congestion in your local area or on your network, try a lower bandwidth stream. I can hear audio, but the picture quality is bad. The stream is designed to favor audio over video, so that you can hear even if the video degrades. This is due to net congestion, a condition on your network or through your Internet Service Provider that we cannot control.