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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

Youtube and other sites are voluntarily lowering their bandwidth because 4k video is probably less important that somebody's online class. I'm sure they save a pretty penny as well.

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I imagine that many classes that moved online are providing video lectures via YouTube.

It is at least plausible that 4k might not be a strict requirement to fully benefit from an online class.

That's true (although in some cases it may be hard to see text on blackboard), anyway it's just about YouTube making the default SD, but HD option is still available.

> Users will still be able to watch in high definition if they want, but will have to choose to do so.

Actually, we (a tribal community college) went with GoToMeeting because it was $19 per instructor (we only needed 20 - some classes in the vocational area are going to do limited face-to-face) and a lot easier for the instructors to deal with. We will probably download all the videos, but I'm not sure we are going to post them to YouTube or let the students catch the replay at GoToMeeting.

Why not? Privacy?

No, they can just follow the link and rerun it with all the uploads and a transcript.

[edit]Also, I'm pretty sure that since our instructors are at home they would probably prefer we put something a little more polished and formal on YouTube to represent their work[/edit]

That's more applicable to large classes at the college level.

College seminars, as well as all of grade school, are conducted live. High school doesn't have "lectures" the way college does, or middle school or elementary school.

You can live stream on youtube. And in fact, it is one of the few free options if you plan to have more than a few dozen viewers.

Its a really hard option for instructors who aren't computer folks and stuck at home. The Business tier allows for 250 participants which is damn good for most classes. I get the feeling a lot of schools will come up with the money for a couple of months for a paid service. We're out $380 a month for our 20 instructors. Also, some of the paid services are allowing schools to use free accounts.

It really shouldn't be hard. There are endless amounts of guides on how to set up OBS and stream to YouTube. You can even get live support by volunteers within a few minutes of asking for help.

Most of the time you don't even need to really set up much. You just take the key and plug it into OBS.

My wife streams using OBS to Twitch. She set it up and it worked for her. Until it didn't suddenly. Then came the very long googling and debugging sessions.

For some reason OBS can't capture my screen properly. I didn't bother debugging but I probably could have. I doubt all school teachers could though.

Why, when I can spend $380 and have a setup that is easy to use and doesn't require me to train on. They watch a nice video and we don't have to do a deploy of OBS to a bunch of laptops.

I'm all for free or open source software, but I'm still dealing with a commercial entity either way. Plus, I don't have to worry about YouTube's algorithm flagging some content.

YouTube's algorithm will demonetize you, but it's very rare that they will make your content inaccessible.

Also, the probability is very high that if you would have run into problems with OBS, then you're going to run into problems with whatever commercial solution you go with. Most of the problems people have with video capture and streaming don't stem from the specific recording software you use. It stems from how your drivers, OS, and settings work together on your hardware.

YouTube's algorithm will demonetize you, but it's very rare that they will make your content inaccessible.

We deal with Native American history and YouTube is a true pain in the butt where the brutality of the truth is concerned. Plus, the instructors have many more tools available on GoToMeeting, and would also like things we put on YouTube to be a bit more polished then a broadcast from their dining room table. Also, both YouTube and GoToMeeting are commericial, non-open source solutions.

Also, the probability is very high that if you would have run into problems with OBS, then you're going to run into problems with whatever commercial solution you go with.

OBS is a very fine, professional solution to streaming. Its capabilities bring complications and is not specifically designed for facilitating meetings. GoToMeeting has a paid professional support staff to answer any questions and provides tools to help.

Most of the problems people have with video capture and streaming don't stem from the specific recording software you use.

I would need to see proof of this statement. GoToMeeting seems very easy for our instructors to start and work with.

I love open source, but we are dealing with something here that requires a solution now which mean spending $380/month on GoToMeeting is a very good idea. We cannot do face-to-face training and deploying OBS and a working setup to 20 laptops at homes, just doesn't seem like a good use of time and way more costly than the $380/mo for a couple of months. Plus, its an easy recommend to other institutions that don't have full IT departments.

I'm pretty sure setting up OBS would rate among the most demanding tasks ever attempted on a computer for most users.

Most users are not techies.

Here's how setting up OBS goes for most users: you install the application and copy paste the stream key into the right box. Then you add what you want captured into a scene and you're done.

Most of the fiddling that happens happens because of your specific hardware and encoders you have. A commercial solution faces the same problem.

Not trying to be funny but is there no online course?

On OBS? There are hundreds, likely thousands of them, but most of them are about optimizing it for bitrate. That's not really needed for a stream for teaching.

Yes, for example I am doing that with my college classes.

How does 4K video prevent somebody’s online class? I have attended numerous university level online classes. None were latency or bandwidth sensitive.

It isn't about the bandwidth to your home, it's about the bandwidth further up the line. It doesn't scale to infinity.

Don't Youtube and Netflix already give free caching servers to any ISP with a significant amount of traffic?

What if people have paid for that bandwidth though, dedicated lines, just not so massively oversubscribed or similar. I kind-of don't think this should be so blanket reduction of all the countries and all the regions, just like the Netflix reduction. It's easier and cheaper for them like this, but it really should be more intelligent.

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