Justin.tv is hiring!

Here's what you need to know about JTV:

• We are the largest live video site in a rapidly growing market. If you want to check them out, some of our competitors in this space are ustream.tv, livevideo.com, stickam.com, mogulus.com, live.yahoo.com and kyte.tv - more spring up almost every day to keep us on our toes.
• We are growing very quickly. Here's a graph of our daily pageviews since last October, when we opened up JTV to anyone who wanted to broadcast: http://abstractnonsense.com/justintv-daily-pageviews-october... Our Alexa graph shows a similar story over roughly the same period of time: http://abstractnonsense.com/justintv-alexa-2-september-2008.... We have over 1.5 million registered users, and our doubling period is roughly 2.5 months.
• Not all the hard problems are solved, and not all the equity is gone. In fact we are dealing with some of the most challenging problems any of us have come across. The scale and speed of our growth force us to experiment with techniques and technologies only the very biggest websites ever need to use. Sometimes we find something other people have pioneered, and adapt it to fit JTV. Other times we're the pioneers, inventing new scaling solutions that we haven't seen anyone else using yet.
• We treat ourselves well. Everyone sits down to a free catered lunch together on week-days. We have a great company health plan that includes dental-care. We subsidize gym memberships and commuting costs. Our office is comfortable, naturally well-lit, and one block from SF Caltrain. You can see it here: http://www.justin.tv/officecam
• Despite treating ourselves well, we're frugal where it counts. We're working our way towards profitability quite quickly.
• The people here are smart, friendly and driven. We have MIT dropouts, robot-builders, and PhDs. We come from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. You'll find us very welcoming, and you'll definitely learn a lot from the people around you.

Here's what we need to know about you:

• You know a bunch of different languages, and you're comfortable learning new ones quickly. You have strong opinions on what makes a language good, but at the end of the day you're a pragmatist and you'll use whatever it takes to get the job done.
• You know Linux. You wouldn't be uncomfortable if someone suggested you spend a few hours digging around /proc to see if you can squeeze a bit more performance out of the tcp stack.
• You know how the web works, at least from HTTP to HTML. You probably need to look up the details, but you know if you needed to, you could figure out everything from cache-control headers to why something isn't rendering properly (in Firefox at least. Only masochists know why things aren't rendering properly in IE6).
• You are available to work in San Francisco.

If you think you're a good fit, and you're excited about JTV, please contact us (jobs@justin.tv) with your answer to one of these problems: http://www.justin.tv/problems

More Beta Broadcaster Accounts Every Day!

We're opening up the process for allowing more people to broadcast on Justin.tv this week by giving out accounts to the first 25 people who enter their email addresses on the broadcaster form after 12 noon PST every day. You can sign up here, and keep checking back for more updates!

EVDO Outages

Our mobile broadband provider has been experiencing some outages across the country which are affecting some of our mobile broadcasters, including Justin and Naked Cowboy. Luckily, Justin is hanging around the office on WiFi all day. Affected broadcasters should be back soon!

Greenville Hospital System US Cycling Pro Championships on Justin.tv

Another Justin.tv first goes down today, with the first ever bike race broadcast through our platform to the Internet at large. The race events continue this whole weekend, and we're expecting a ton of viewers:

Friday

2:00 PM - Opening Press Conference - Greenville Hospital System USA Professional Cycling Championships

6:00 PM - Live "mingling" - Sponsor and Athlete Reception (Submit questions to riders LIVE via chat)

7:00 PM - Athlete Presentation and Preview Show - Greenville Hospital System USA Professional Cycling Championships. Featuring George Hincapie, Saul Raisin and Dave Zabriskie.

Saturday

11:00 AM - USA Professional Cycling Championships Individual Time Trial Presented by The Cliffs Communities - "The Race Of Truth"
edit

2:00 PM - Post Time Trial Press Conference (pending proper internet connection)
edit

7:00 PM - Live concert/Festival Footage from the event venue - Downtown Greenville, SC (pending proper internet connection)


Sunday

12:00 PM - Pre-race Broadcast - USA Cycling Professional Championships Road Race

1:00 PM - USA Cycling Professional Championships Road Race - Live!

We're excited to see how this turns out!

Broadcaster Profiles

We've made a mistake and I want to apologize to our broadcasters for starting to kill IFRAMEs from broadcaster profiles without warning. We implemented it for security purposes without realizing that so many people were using them to support links for their paypal donations for broadcast equipment, etc. Some of the cleverest of you out there (jspin.tv) have figured out how to wrap an IFRAME in an OBJECT to get your paypal buttons back.

We're not removing this yet, but inevitably, it is a security hole we will probably remove, as it allows you to execute JS on the page. We want to allow broadcasters to make profile spaces their own, and put whatever Flash widgets, html, and custom css they want there, including their own sponsorship logos or paypal donation buttons. We just need to make sure everyone can do it in a way that doesn't compromise Justin.tv.

So, right now if you want to put a working paypal link on your page, you should use the following html or something similar:


<a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=your_email">
<img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but04.gif" />
</a>

Which will produce something like this:



Let us know if you're having any trouble with it. Thanks!

Justine and Justin featured in Yahoo story with Kevin Sites

Justine and I did a story with Kevin Sites last month and it just got released to the Yahoo front page today. Which is sending us a bunch of traffic. And the story was pretty good to (the day we filmed it I observed a teenage girl steal a guy's cell phone and run off, and we walked around Santa Monica, and I got to go to E3!).

Check out the video here: http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/40075/the-real-reality-tv

New front page for Justin.tv

We've changed the front page over to the portal page (and added a sexy new footer). We figured it was about time, since I've been spending most of my days working on improving the site, which isn't that interesting to watch! Tell us what you think--and if you tell me you miss me being the landing page for Justin.tv, I won't mind too much ;)

Broadcasting Video Games

This broadcasting guide is writen by Swiftor, one of our gamers here at Justin.tv You can check out his original post on his blog, here. He wrote an incredibly thorough guide about broadcasting and how he does it and was kind enough to let us use it here on Justin.tv. Take a look.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. A capture card that accepts composite inputs. I use the Avermedia A 180. Find it here: Newegg.com

• Are there better capture cards? Maybe. But this is the PCI card used in the PC I use to broadcast. It has worked well for my purposes and will be . Do your own research before trying other cards. Personally, I could not get the Dazzle Platinum capture device to work. Also, make sure the PC you're using your capture device with is compatible with the card. For instance, you'll need a PCI slot for the Avermedia. Just be sure. This card cost me around $75 shipped, you may be able to get it cheaper somewhere else.

2. A way to send the video from your console to your T.V. AND capture card. Ex. TV Out or adapters/spliters.

• In my case, my t.v. has an Audio and Video composite out. If yours does not, you'll need to use a mechanism to split the video/audio to your t.v. and other devices (capture card and/or mixer). Any good suggestions out there for where to get these cables for? Those without a T.V. out will need it. I'm sure Radio Shack has em' in some form.

3. Up to 2 sets of Composite Cables.

• I plug my console into my t.v. using it's composite cables, then I use another set of composite cables to send the audio from my t.v. to the mixer, and then use the final set of cables to take the audio from the mixer to the capture card. The video skips the mixer, in that it goes from console to t.v., then t.v. to capture card. Make sense? Just make sure you account for all the cables and adapters you'll need.

4. An internet connnection with good upload speeds 1.5 Megs up suggested!

1. Without an adequate internet connection to upload your feeds, your investment of time and money just doesn't make sense. In the Flash Media Encoder software that will be mentioned shorlty, you can adjust the quality and bandwith that will be required. I suggest you have at least 1.5mbps (megabits per second) upstream. You may be able to get away with 768kbps (768 kilobits per second) up but you'll need to be careful about what else happens on your connection while streaming (No Torrents, No Downloads, Etc.).

5. Flash Media Encoder - this is the software that will take your stream and send it Justin.tv. The software is free and you can grab it from Adobe.

• As of this writing, other streaming providers don't seem quite up to par with the ability to stream content with a high framerate (games!). If you know of some other sites that can do a good job, post a comment.

6. Sign up for a Justin.tv account if you intend to use Flash Media Encoder.

• After you sign up, you'll need your FME XML file. Press the Broadcast button while logged into Justin.tv, then in the new window that pops up... look for the FME link at the bottom of the window, it might be hard to see. After you open up that window, it'll give you a quick primer on where to get Flash Media Encoder and a link to download the XML file for YOUR account. You'll need this later, so save it.

• Other sites may now support Flash Media Encoder by the time you read this, if so, be sure to post a comment indicating so and your success (or not) with it.

7. A Mixer. Want to talk to your viewers while playing? Yes, you do. One way to do it is to use a hardware mixer. I use the Behringer Xenyx 502 Mixer.

• There are lots of other mixers out there. At the time of this writing, you can grab one of these off ebay for $45 shipped in the U.S. But basically any mechanism that will let you combine the audio from your console and your microphone (or other audio sources, like ipod, laptop, etc.) should work.

Other Considerations:

8 - Get A laptop!

• Ok this isn't absolutely required, but it's quite handy. You'll need a way see what your viewers are typing to you, and a laptop really helps. A nearby PC can work as well, but I've found a laptop to be a great tool. Looking for a hot laptop that is totally overkill for this purpose, check out the Lenovo Thinkpad X300. I use an older Thinkpad T42, but the X300 is seriously sexy and very well reviewed.

9 - Tolerance for playing your games in Standard Definition.

• Do you love your HD TV? Playing your next gen games in high definition? Well, you may have to take it down a notch if you intend to stream games live. At the time of this writing, I know of no reasonable way to play games in HD while streaming them using a capture card. When I say reasonable, I mean something under $1000 and the ability to stream at the higher resolution without alienating viewers without super uber high speed connections. Therefore, ever since I've started broadcasting, I have played in Standard Definition, meaning using the composite (Yellow, Red, White) outputs of my consoles. I got used to it quickly, but I've always been one to focus more on gamplay and less on eye candy. If you have comments on broadcasting with compontent or hdmi outputs, post em'!

SET UP!

1. Install your capture card and install the drivers.

• Refer to the manual for details, but it should be pretty straight forward.

2. Make sure the console(s) you wish to stream are configured to output to composite (standard definition).

• Test this out on your T.V. first and make sure it works.
  

3. VIDEO CAPTURE
   

• Get the composite video from your console to your capture card. As perviously mentioned, I do this via the video out on my TV So the console plugs into lets say Video 1 on the TV, then the Video Out on the TV goes to capture card. Voila. Capture card AND the T.V. should be getting the video signal! If your T.V. doesn't have a video out, you'll have to do some magic will adapter cables or perhaps a pricey splitter box. I'll post details on a good way to do this when the info hits me.
  

4. AUDIO CAPTURE
   

• Get the composite Audio to go to your T.V. If your T.V. has that vital audio out ... send it to your mixer if you have one (the mixer I list above has inputs for composite audio) or if you don't have a mixer, plug it right into your capture card.
• So now, your capture card should be getting audio from either your T.V. or mixer.
• It may also be possible to use both optical sound output from your console to your sound system, while just sending the composite output directly to your capture card or mixer. Seems to work for me on my 360. At least you can keep your surround sound! Don't be afraid to examine the possiblities of using your reciever (if you have one) to make your setup easier/better.
  

5. Mixer Considerations

• You may need adapters to get your audio inputs to work with the mixer. For example, none of my PC microphones work when I plug them into the mixer, even if i use an adapter from Radio Shack. I need to send it through my laptop. So basically:
• I plug my Mic into my laptops Microphone in jack.
• I plug a 1/8" male cable into the headphone out jack on my laptop, which then goes to a 1/8" to 1/4" adapter that plugs into the mixer.
• I then unmute the Mic in the Windows Audio Mixer.
• This is a pretty sloppy setup, I should really just get a Mic that plugs into the Mixer directly, but if you do use this route, make sure everything else on your laptop has its volume off, like any streams that are running, any reminder noises, etc. Those will come through on your broadcast. The plus side, is that with your laptop connected to your mixer, you can find Sound Boards on the internet and play humorous or appropriate sounds during your broadcast to add some livliness.
• You will likely need to adjust the sound levels on your mixer to get everything just right, you can do that during testing below.

6. Flash Media Encoder

• After intsalling Flash Media Encoder, go to File and Open Profile. Open the XML file you got from Justin.tv (as mentioned in Step 6 in the REQUIREMENTS above) and it will populate many of the necessary fields for you.
• Next, choose the video capture device from the Device drop down under the Video section on the left. You should see your video capture card if it's supported and installed properly.
• After you select your video device, in my case the Avermedia, set the frame rate to 15 and the resolution to 320x240.
• Then press the wrench to the right of the device drop down. In my case, I had to change the video input on the Crossbar tab to Composite in. If it's set to TUNER like the default was for me, you won't see any video coming through. Press OK.
• Still under the video area, select a bit rate. I suggest starting off with 350 and increasing it to 500 if your streams appear to be smooth for all your viewers. If people say they are getting buffering, reduce the bitrate back down to 350. You could go higher with the bitrate (which will impact the quality of the video stream), but remember... the higher you set it, the more bandwith your viewers will need. If a viewer doesn't have a "fat pipe" to watch your stream, you'll be alienating them, menaing they won't have a very enjoyable time watching your stream. I used to broadcast at a bit rate of 800, then 650, then eventually settled at 500 because it made the most people happy and kept the stream at a reasonable quality. Feel free to experiment.
• Next press the wrench next to Advanced. For the quality section... choose Lowest Quality - Best Framerate. I hate to say it, but when it comes to broadcasting games, you'll see that frame rate is more key to a better stream than the quality of the picture. Feel free to share your experiences.
• Now under the audio section, choose your capture card once again.
• Set the Format field to Nelly Moser. I've had the best experience with Nelly.
• My sample rate is 22050 and the Bit Rate is 44, but you can experiment with something higher.
• NOW SAVE YOUR PROFILE. If FME crashes before you save, you may have to redo all the above.
• Now that it's saved, you should see some preview windows at the top of program. Boot up your console and see if your video appears there. In my case, the TV had to be on and set to the appropriate video channel for the video output to be sent to the capture card. If everything is configured correctly with the video, you sould see it in the Output window.
• There should also be an audio bar there too, and if Flash Media Encoder is getting sound, that should be going up and down. If it's not, go into Video device wrench configuration, go to the Crossbar tab and check off where it says link related streams.
• In some cases, where I got no sound, I had to close FME, open it up again, and re open the XML configuratoin file we saved above.
  

7. The Test!

• I suggest putting a password on yoru Justin.tv channel while doing your testing, or just testing using a separate account.
• In FME, press START and if you get no network errors or such, your video and audio should start appearing in your channel.
• Play a game, do some talking then check out the results on your stream. You can do this by just using head phones to another PC watching the stream, or by just watching the archives of what you just recorded. Then just tweak the sound and quality to what works best for you and your viewers. Once you're ready to go live, make your channel public and have a good time
  

8. Ettiquette

• What good is a stream with no one to watch it. Well, now that I think of it, you can use your stream to capture video and easily post clips to youtube ... but that aside, streaming is fun because you hang out and interact with your fellow viewers!

Here are my personal suggestions:

1. Respect your Viewers.
1. Don't expect your viewers to treat you with respect if you don't do the same. If you have someone being disrspectful... and they are ignoring your requests or rules, then you or your mods should probably take action (a time out or ban).
2. Appoint trusted moderators in your channel.
1. Your goal should be to create a great experience for yourself and your viewers. Having to focus on the administrative tasks of the channel can detract from crafting a good time. This is where having trusted, understanding, knowledgable, awesome moderators can make your channel shine. The mods you appoint should be trust worthy and understand the goals of your channel. In most cases, you want mods who will help clarify the rules of the channel while
3. Make the rules of your channel clear and available.
1. State the rules of the channel clearly in the about you channel. If a question about what is allowed is asked frequently, you may want to add it to your page as well.
4. Don't post links to your channel in other channels without getting permission.
1. When you're new to broadcasting, and want to get the word out, it may be tempting to go into the most popular channels and spam your address link. That will likely hurt you more than help. Making friend and establishing a relationship with others in the community is one of the better first steps to establishing your presence.
5. Be yourself.

Chat Upgraded

Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback about the Justin.tv chat. Channels now have six chat rooms, so you can talk with friends outside of the main room. Just click "Options" in the chat window, then "Rooms" to select a new room. Enjoy!

Nonviral video

Phil made a new Justin.tv promo video for fun the other day. Check it out: it's Justin v. Michael as we intensely play the Wii that Nintendo sent us.

Phil's New Justin.tv Community Channel

Hey everyone. From now on I'm going to be actively posting to the Justin.tv blog as more of a community manager. To kick this off, I've launched my own channel at Justin.tv/phil which will serve as a resource for viewers and publishers to come in and chat with a Justin.tv employee about the site. This is your chance to voice your thoughts and gripes about Justin.tv, so make use of it! See you there.

Community Guidelines

We've had a few issues with needing more community moderation features on some content on the site, and so we put in a few extra hours tonight and rolled out community flagging of explicit content. If you see something that violates our rules, please use the report button beneath the video to tell us. Also, check out our tips for keeping yourself safe while broadcasting online.

Timothy Daniel: an awesome Justin.tv channel

I just checked out Timothy Daniel's page, and have to congratulate him on being the first broadcaster to make use of our new header feature. He did a great job of it, and I think this is a perfect example of what we were hoping would happen with custom headers on channel pages. His channel is also pretty interesting: check it out to watch Timothy play the guitar!

Screencaps Arrive

We just pushed another roll out. Aside from a bunch of minor bug fixes, and a few archiver and broadcaster improvements, you probably won't notice that much different on the site. Except perhaps, the totally awesome screencaps now on every Highlight and Episode. Kyle and Jacob went through and print screened every archived clip by hand to bring you these, so you guys had better be thankful!



Broadcasters: it's also now possible to upload your own custom header and background, so you can have a page like the Jonas Brothers or One Tree Hill without having to hack in custom CSS (we got tired of doing that; it was taking away time from print screening the screencaps). Go forth, and make your page look great!

Congrats iJustine!

iJustine has been getting national attention this week for her new video on her 300 page iphone bill. Watch the video on her blog; she's been featured on PC World, Information Week and on the front page of MySpace! Congrats iJustine!

Happy Birthday Kyle!

The whole JTV team took some time off this weekend to celebrate the 22nd birthday of our very own kid genius, The Ringer himself, Kyle Vogt. We started off Friday at the office party of our good friends Matt, Adam and Gabor over at Xobni (see me fighting Gabor to below), which was a surprisingly awesome party considering it was in someone's office. Saturday night we celebrated in style with a founders round of Mario Party on the Wii, and then a special limo tour of some awesome SF bars.

But it's Sunday now, and that means back to work for the whole crew. We've got another release this week that we should get ready to push! Happy Birthday, Kyle! Special thanks to long time fan Smojo, who made a special post for Kyle on his blog!

Updated Show and Highlights Features on Justin.tv!

Last week we rolled out an entirely new look for the page, and since then we've gotten a ton of emails, gotten a lot of feedback, and worked hard on improving the flaws in our system. We just pushed another release that updated and changed the way our archiving system works on Justin.tv channel pages. We started off by changing the name "Tips" (as much as I do love inventing my own words for things, read: lifecast, no one knew what that meant) to "Highlights."

Here are the other things we've done:

• We've also started allowing broadcasters to mark off start and end times to create their own shows, which can be done from the Archive page. Shows are now displayed on the channel page right under the video, so broadcasters can highlight their best content even if they aren't broadcasting 24/7. We'll be adding more features to enhance the non-live experience in the near future!

• Show episodes and highlights each have their own list pages now, which allows you to much more easily browse and find interested content!
• Finally, we've added Search. You can now find all those shows you always wanted to, without having to remember the pesky URL!

If you still want to make Highlights while watching the Live video, you can still do that by clicking the "+" button in the Fan Highlights box. We're also allowing you to start live highlights from a few seconds back now, so you can be sure that your highlight will include that awesome moment!

Load testing tonight at Midnight PST

In order to continually improve our quality of service, we will be conducting load testing at approximately 12AM PST tonight. Please bear with us if the website goes down temporarily; we're doing it so that we can be sure to handle increased load in the near future!

Archiver down temporarily

Note to all broadcasters: the archiving system on Justin.tv is down temporarily while our CDN, bitgravity, does maintenance on its system. Unfortunately this means that video broadcast right now won't be saved, but the system will be back soon. We're also moving on to our own system in the near future, which will prevent this kind of outages. Thanks for your patience.

Downtime today

Some of you might be experiencing difficulty connecting to the site today. We apologize for the downtime; the problem is that our DNS host has gone down, and unfortunately there isn't much we can do about it until they fix their data centers. Hopefully we'll be up again soon!

Disney's Jonas Brothers launch their own Justin.tv!

Tonight we broadcasted the live release of Jonas Brothers new album, Jonas Brothers. The band, a Disney Radio pop phenomenon, travelled from their hotel to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square to buy the album and take photos with fans. At our peak we broadcasted video to 4200 concurrent viewers! That's a lot of Jonas Brothers fans from Myspace and Youtube.

The Jonas Brothers will be back today at 11AM EST, so catch them then and at night during their NYC concert!

Major Site Release! New features abound!

I'm extremely proud to announce that tonight the JTV team has released a major upgrade to the site. This rollout is the culmination of months of ideas and a couple weeks of 14 hour working days for team, and Emmett, Kyle and Jacob all deserve a ton of credit for burning the midnight oil to get this out. Here are some of the changes we're pleased to announce:

• A new tip system. We've removed announcements and made it easier for people to tip, but putting the tip submission form right beneath the video. We've also seperated tips for channels and put in a recommended section on each page.

• Seperate pages for live, archive, and tips. We wanted to make it super simple and obvious whether you were watching live or archived video, and easy to share tips with friends. We're rolling out more tip features in the next few days to make tips even more like traditional short form content.

• A brand new live video viewer. Our most exciting announcement, we've released the beta version of the live video viewer we've been talking about for months! Check it out here!

I've moved over from doing a lot of production with other people to helping manage projects on the site, so while my stream might be a few more hours of staring at the website and talking about technical stuff for the time being, hopefully this means a more awesome viewing experience for all our viewers. Look for a more features and more beta broadcasters in the next week, as we race towards opening up our network!

Video Tutorials

Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Video Guides on Justin.tv

Ron Paul Broadcasting the ABC Iowa Debates on Justin.tv

Here at Justin.tv we've been claiming for months that lifecasting might be new today, but as people get the ability to broadcast easily online they will come up with even more diverse and interesting uses for it. And they definitely have: even though we've only released a very limited number of beta codes to broadcasters thus far, we've seen our beta testers broadcast from inside car shops, go on live ghost hunts, and even perform on the street naked! And in the continued tradition of broadening what is covered online with live video, we're excited to announce that the Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign will be broadcasting from the ABC Iowa Debates tomorrow starting at 8am CST on justin.tv/ronpaul.

We're working on getting even more political coverage as the 2008 Presidential Race heats up, so look for more live feeds from Iowa in the next few weeks. That's all for now, I've got to get back to work on the next big update (coming out very, very soon, I promise).

Phil R. joins the team as a producer!

We're proud to announce that Phil R., a Los Altos native, has joined the team this week full-time as an assistant producer. Phil will be taking over responsibility for handing out broadcaster invites while we're ramping up to open up the network, as well as working with many of our broadcasters to make their shows as compelling and interesting as possible. So for those of you out there who have questions on how to get in the beta, want to know what you should do once you're in it, or just have a great idea for live broadcasting something on the web, feel free contact Phil at phil@justin.tv.

In other news, we've been coding like crazy to get our latest release out the door: a complete upgrade to the channel pages, and the introduction of a new live video viewer that we think will make it a lot easier to quickly browse through the live video on the site. We're super excited to roll it out next week, look for more updates soon!