Frequently Asked Questions
ESM Viewer
Why don't I see any video when I tune in?
There are several reasons for why this may occur:
- You are behind a firewall or NAT, and ESM cannot receive data. ESM needs the following ports open to function: 9800, 9811, 9801, 9823.
- ESM is buffering data. In this case, video will display after five to ten seconds.
- There is congestion between your ISP and the source of the broadcast. Unfortunately, this is a reality of the Internet, and connecting to the broadcast at a later time may work better.
- Either VLC or Windows Media Player is not installed. See the download page for links to download these programs.
Windows is asking me to unblock a program called proxy. What is this?
proxy is the piece of software that does all of the "heavy lifting" for ESM. It maintains the peer-to-peer connections with other ESM users, and receives the video stream from them.
Is the chat in the viewer the same as the chat in the web viewer?
At this moment, they are different chat rooms. The software we use for the chat in the web viewer (phpfreechat) is different than the software we use in the standalone viewer (irc).
How come I can't tune into an event with VLC? Why can't ESM find VLC?
On the Mac, this problem may be caused by a corrupted Launch Services cache. If you have no idea what that is, you may want to grab a copy of Tiger Cache Cleaner and try a Light clean (you can do this with the demo). Failing that, copying VLC into the ESM Viewer bundle will work. Right click on ESM Viewer and select Show Package Contents. Then open Contents and Resources, and copy VLC into that folder.
This same trick will work on Windows, too. Just copy VLC into the Resources directory where ESM Viewer was installed, and make sure the folder is named vlc. The path to vlc.exe will be Resources/vlc/vlc.exe.
ESM Broadcaster
Can I run multiple ESM channels at once?
At this time, you cannot. ESM's proxy listens on port 9800 for incoming traffic, and it is not possible to run more than one instance of proxy because of this. In the future, proxy will listen on a dynamic port, thus enabling multiple broadcasts to be run from one machine. ESM Broadcaster currently supports editing multiple channels, and once proxy uses a dynamic port, it will support running multiple broadcasts simultaneously.
How do I run a broadcast from behind a firewall / NAT?
You must open the following ports: 9800, 9811, 9801, 9823.
Windows is asking me to unblock a program called proxy. What is this?
proxy is the piece of software that does all of the "heavy lifting" for ESM. It maintains the peer-to-peer connections with other ESM users, and receives the video stream from them.