Outside Broadcast

[Dodgecaliber]

Hi all,

 

Gig coming up soon, there is a local community radio station envolved which want a live feed from the venue (On the other side of the city)

 

As they are a community station I doubt they have any OB kit nor the experienced staff.

 

Any suggestions on how to do this over the web?

 

I know there are sites like Justin.tv and a few others that are similar to internet radio however I just need a point to point decent quality feed.

 

I'll probably send it from the main mix or a mic to the station, but Im just looking for a fast and easy way to do so.

 

Any ideas?

[smalljoshua]

I worked on a BBC gig just before Christmas. They had a separate mix for both the live and broadcast mix. The Broadcast mix was send Via an ISDN line to the Studio. There was also a return down the ISDN line so the studio could talk to the OB people.

 

They didn't use an OB van for the audio but they did setup in a different room to the one the performance was in.

 

You will need to Mic up everything. If this is being done for the PA at the venue, Direct outs could be used into a 2nd desk for the broadcast feed.

 

Josh

[bruce]

As they are a community station I doubt they have any OB kit nor the experienced staff.

 

That's quite a patronising statement. I'm sure the community radio stations know far more about this subject, and have much more practical experience in this arena, than you do.

 

Have you asked them for their advice, or are you just making assumptions?

 

 

(for info, one of the Glasgow-based community radio stations produced more hours of OB in January than BBC Radio Scotland. )

[smalljoshua]

Bruce: Was it the one you have some involvement with?

 

Josh

[Dodgecaliber]

It's not an assumption - From what I've been told the two folk who knew the most about OB's have since left. And as such, there is no one available to op their kit - And the only stuff they have is balanced telephone lines for phone interviews.

 

Again - This is all whats been passed to me from a non technical person - I've got to chase it up tomorrow to see what they can actualy offer - I just wanted to see if anyone on the BR could come up with an alternative, I.E web based streaming as oposed to ISDN lines as the venue doesn't have any data lines.

[bruce]

Tell them to talk to the community broadcasting network. The expertise is available.

[Dodgecaliber]

Tell them to talk to the community broadcasting network. The expertise is available.

 

 

Ahh never knew something like that existed, I'll look into it - Cheers

[sleah]

One possibility is using Windows Media encoder. You really need a fixed IP at the remote end, or at least one that won't be changing in a hurry :blink:

If using mobile broadband you may need to contact the ISP to ask them to allow it/open ports/whatever.

The software is free and is as reliable as the internet connection. With decent bandwidth, the quality is actually very good, certainly good enough for FM.

 

I'm looking in to this for the community station I'm involved in. We actually have a POTS based unit, which is in fact two modems so the sound quality is close to ISDN. It may not be quite as good as 'FM' for music, but miles better than 'AM', We've used it for live music with great sucess, apart from the line dropping occasionally. :blink:

[bruce]

Bruce: Was it the one you have some involvement with?

 

Yes - during January we were doing up to 10 hours OB a day, from several venues.

 

But we're not the only ones doing this sort of thing.

 

Basically, if the community radio people are coming to broadcast a gig, then they'll generally need 2 things - a feed from the PA (your FoH mix will be fine) and some network connectivity - a decent broadband connection is usually OK. They may use ISDN if it's available.

 

.. and a bit of space and a 13A socket.

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

One possibility is using Windows Media encoder.

 

Yuk.

 

Slightly better plan - use something like edcast, relaying via an icecast server. It's a technology that most community radio stations will be familiar with, as it's the most common way of doing their internet streaming. It doesn't need any fixed IPs at the OB end. firewalling issues are minimal, and is easy to test - in general if the remote site can listen to your regular stream, they will be able to be a source (but need to check bandwidth and contention)

 

That's always our "plan B" - any time we go to a new OB, we take a laptop and external soundcard to do this.

 

But the best way, given just a standard broadband connection, is to use a dedicated hardware encoder, generating a rtp stream. Less overhead, and much lower latency, and in general more reliable. But may need some firewall magic to make it work.

[tolley1466]

Direct outs could be used into a 2nd desk for the broadcast feed.

 

Only problem with this is having to compress everything because you may have inputs peaking unexpectedly... which may affect the broadcast etc...

[smalljoshua]

http://www.icecast.org/ is very powerful software and I have used it to do all of the sound for a youth DJ competition I used about 9 servers (one in each location) and the 9th for the central location. I noticed no latency problems at all. All sound in each venue went back to me and back out to Youth Clubs all over the city where people were DJing remotely.

 

Josh

[sleah]

One possibility is using Windows Media encoder.

 

Yuk.

 

 

:blink: But it's free and you can DIY without involving 3rd parties (software or services wise).

We actually use something that plugs in to WinAmp for our internet stream*, that then pushes to the CMA (Community Media Association) for redistribution, which means we only need one stream out of the studio.

 

An OB will only need one stream anyway, from A to B, so that's why I think Win Media encoder is a quick and simple solution that will give good enough results.

The caveat being it isn't too tolerent if the connection hiccups. But then you get what you pay for!

 

 

 

 

*We are a 24hr FM station with a parallel internet stream. < this is just what I do voluntarily in my spare time :blink:

[bruce]

We actually use something that plugs in to WinAmp for our internet stream*, that then pushes to the CMA (Community Media Association) for redistribution, which means we only need one stream out of the studio.

Yes, that's exactly the situation I described - the "something" is probably edcast.

 

An OB will only need one stream anyway, from A to B, so that's why I think Win Media encoder is a quick and simple solution that will give good enough results.

The caveat being it isn't too tolerent if the connection hiccups. But then you get what you pay for!

 

Perhaps a better way would be to run a local icecast server in the studio, purely for the OBs - you could even run it on the same machine as the playout application. One stream in, one out. That way you're using familiar technology, and you can easily set it to reconnect if you get any glitches. And it's easy to monitor it - just connect a second player to the stream.

 

One caveat - all of these plans involve a double-encoding - conversion from audio to mp3/ogg/whatever to get it to the studio, back to analogue, then re-encoding again for onward transmission. If you're not careful, you will get nasty artifacts. make sure the provider stream (ie the OB) is significantly better quality than the consumer one.

[andrew.p.r]

I do a lot of work with Bradford University student station and when it comes to an OB I am usually called on I have found that the best method is taking a copy of FOH or a separate aux mix into an external sound-card or directly in to my Mac then send that off to an ice-cast server which the studio can just re-broadcast now we already have all of these things set up so there is now extra problem with us for doing this.