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Live Webcasting with more than one camera


Bobbsy

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A friend of my wife is a singer and wants to start webcasting some of her concerts. She's done one already with just a single camera but now wants to investigate using 2 or more cameras with switching/mixing between them. My ever helpful wife volunteered me to advise.

 

In my pre-retirement TV days my solution would obviously be spending a 5 or 6 figure sum on a large vision mixer but I suspect that might not fly in this this situation.

 

Can anyone recommend software/hardware solutions that would allow this to happen? FYI, I believe she has access to both Windows and Apple computers so either could be the "master" machine. My question is aimed to both find software to enable the mixing and encoding but also the most cost effective way to feed the cameras into a computer. As you might guess, cheap would win over good, so long as the quality is up to real time streaming with music.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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The Vmix software comes quite highly regarded I believe. Otherwise there's a software version of a Atem switcher?

 

Otherwise some of the Roland vision mixers have a usb interface which enables the mixed output to be streamed via a PC to YouTube or Livestream?

 

The vision mixers have both hdmi (use long leads and/or hd base t to extend) and HDSDI inputs as well as a basic audio mixer- mix in a couple of crowd mics

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There are a lot of ways to do this depending on what quality output you're looking for and how much money you want to spend.

 

You can't beat the Blackmagic Atem mixers for cost vs. features - the TVStudio mixer would be perfect for what you're doing.

I've set up a system at my church for live webcasting the services to church members who are housebound, we use an Atem1 mixer (has more inputs to allow us to overlay song words etc), this is captured as HDSDI into a pc using a Blackmagic decklink card, we encode using Adobe Flash Media Live encoder (free) and stream using Bambuser (paid service) or Youtube (free once you've jumped through lots of hoops). We also record locally in full HD for future use of the material. We have 4 Panasonic AW-HE40 ptz/robotic cameras.

 

One thing I would warn of is that if you use HDMI out from consumer cameras they all seem to have a different delay on the picture and it can be quite a lot - up to half a second - which makes live operation / mixing quite hard.

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Let's see...

 

I have no idea of budget (or if there even is one). The person who wants to do this lives 10,000 miles away and I've just been asked to make some suggestions. She's not going to want to spend much though.

 

Yes, it's real live streaming. She did her first one through an outfit called "Concert Window" and got enough response she wants to do more/better.

 

Of the things mentioned, I suspect Switcher Studio might be the one for now...with Vmix being another option. I'll have to ask about available cameras and their outputs.

 

Anyhow, thanks for the suggestions so far--I'm already learning there's a world beyond Grass Valley!

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Hi I have a video streaming company.

The most important thing you need is fast, stable data connection.

Most venues dont have this, the ones that do often charge for it's use.

We use a satellite data dish.

 

Here's a boot-leg of one of our recent broadcasts:

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Thanks Jason...but just for the record, I'm located in Australia and the person who's asked me for advice is in Arizona! Anyway, her first venture into streaming was from her home studio and the data connection seemed okay...unlike the lighting, sound and camera! :)
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I looked at satellite data link once. The speed available was fantastic, but there was an accepted latency in excess of half a second. Things may have improved but there is still the time to and from the satellite to account for. This may work for "live concert video" (or not) but it certainly doesn't work for anything interactive.
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  • 2 weeks later...

I looked at satellite data link once. The speed available was fantastic, but there was an accepted latency in excess of half a second. Things may have improved but there is still the time to and from the satellite to account for. This may work for "live concert video" (or not) but it certainly doesn't work for anything interactive.

 

This I can answer! The latency is built in when using satellites. The satellites themselves orbit 25,000(ish) miles above the equator so, for uplink and downlink there's a round trip of more than 50,000 miles which (even at the speed of light) is around a third of a second. Add in the delay incurred with digital coding (which can be around a half second in itself depending on the GOP used) and you can see that latency will always be an issue for anything interactive.

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Thanks for the info so far...either Vmix or Switcher Studio seems to be what she's after and she's looking into both.

 

Now, a secondary question. Does anyone have recommendations for companies offering live streaming services with the ability to monetise them? Currently the woman in question is using a company called "Concert Window" and they've been okay but their payment interface can be a bit clunky (from the viewer end) and doesn't take Paypal. The final straw is that, up to now, they've offered their bandwidth and payment services for 20% of takings but they're about to raise their rates to 30%.

 

Again, thanks in advance.

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