Live Streaming on FB/Periscope

[SA90]

Hello Blue Roomers,

 

I have been attached to the Marketing Dept at the school I work for in order to capture all the performances/concerts/speeches etc on video or record audio.

We did our first live stream of a 'start of term' church service, which was fine. Just basic live stream onto Facebook off an iPad.

 

My question is;

 

IS there a more 'professional' solution to live streaming than running straight off a mobile device? I would imagine running a good quality webcam of a laptop with a USB mic would be better than an iPad?

Anybody have a little 'live stream' rig that they use?

 

Cheers

 

S

[J Pearce]

We've just bought a blackmagic webpresenter, which takes in two sources, 1 HDMI, 1 SDI, and analogue audio, and embeds them as a fixed 720p variable framerate stream. Seems pretty resilient, and doesn't cost much for what it provides.

[Jivemaster]

What do you aim for? Does your budget support that?

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=65d2svAqFfA

 

May be good enough but would it be on budget! Plus you'd need a crew of 100 on vision, 100 on sound, etc

[henny]

Take a look at https://www.epiphan.com/products/webcaster-x1-facebook/

[dosxuk]

Both Periscope and Facebook (and most other live streaming sites) accept inputs using RTMP, and there is a wealth of software and hardware out there that can generate an RTMP stream. This ranges from a £25 USB video capture device off eBay and FFMPEG (free), through to dedicated hardware costing £0000s.

 

My video encoders use BMD Decklink cards (~£100) and either Flash Media Live Encoder (FMLE) or FFMPEG (both free) as standard, and normally streaming to Facebook or YouTube.

[david.elsbury]

We have a couple Teradek VidiU encoders- you could also use the Cube as the next step up. HDMI input, super easy to use, streams to all the major platforms

[intyra]

We use OBS to handle the streaming-to-Facebook side of things, along with a couple of Blackmagic Intensity capture cards.

[Javis]

+1 for OBS, I have used this before with an AJA IO to get the camera into the laptop and it worked well, allowing for cut to graphics etc too

[the kid]

WE got this https://www.insta360.com/product/insta360-4k/specs for a few jobs, its pretty good once its going and might be a bit different. Set up was a bit of a pain IIR but it worked well, and we did an overlay of an audio track so putting some audio in should be ok.

[SA90]

Thanks gang, good responses

[bovsound]

If the OP doesn't object, I'd lie to hijack the thread a little and ask an extension question:

 

We are looking into a more effective way of archiving events (shows, post-show discussions, etc). Currently the stage picture camera feeds a hard disc recorder, from which we burn a DVD and then manually upload it onto the archive network folder. Ideally I'd like to cut out the whole HDD process and record straight to the destination drive (over the network?). In addition (and the reason I'm posting here), we are also looking to begin live-streaming performances. The camera feed would also need to be used as the main stage picture for DSM and show crew. Is there an efficient and high quality way to combine the 3 uses (show picture, archive recording, streaming)? It would be a static camera with fixed image.

 

Restrictions on this are:

1) For stage operation, the picture would still use the existing (analogue) building infrastructure for video distribution.

2) Recording needs to be operated from the control position (there is network access here, so I assume this is easily done).

3) I don't know about what management are hoping to do with streaming, but I would assume there may be additional cameras with different shots.

 

Does such a system exist, or do we need to look into a specific streaming setup and keep it separate?

 

TIA

[Dave m]

Logistically you ideally need a direct feed from one camera for the SM with minimal delay

If doing multicamera, someone has to press the buttons live, or it can be quite time consuming (I do live theatre and multicam post)

I did a gig at the festival hall recently and they have a blackmagic mixer that records all streams and a mix although it cost a fair bit

 

[Shez]

I suspect the required uses are too different to be able to lever them all from that one fixed camera. The SM feed (particularly if the camera switches to IR in blackout) really isn't what you want to watch as a viewer.

[bovsound]

To clarify, we do have a dedicated IR camera for the DSM as well.

 

It seems as though the streaming needs to be an entirely standalone thing due to its complexity of multi cameras and vision mixing. In which case I am purely looking at ways to record the show picture directly to the network, whilst keeping an analogue feed for the DSM/show operators.