Live Multicam Streaming

D

dmitrizigany

Veteran
Hey!

As a result of the Corona thing I’ve gotten some requests to do live streams for bands that have had their tours cancelled.
Even though there won’t be much money in it at this point, I was already a bit interested in it. So this could be a good opportunity to dip my toes in it a bit.

Trying to figure out what hardware I would need.

The Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini seems to be almost perfect for my initial needs. And it’s very affordable at €270. It is, however, back-ordered everywhere (if anyone know a reseller that has it in stock in Europe, let me know).
Step up would be the Blackmagic Television Studio HD at €800. Which also would need some extra gizmo to get the video to my computer for streaming, which would mean at least €1000 total. So a bit of an investment.

Is there anything else on the market that’s affordable and decent? The Roland V-8HD looks great but only available for preorder at this time...

Thanks?
 
Getting the video from the switcher into the computer is trivial. Magewell SDI USB capture card, Elegato CamLink and HD60, AJA UTap, Blackmagic Mini Recorder and Decklink cards can all capture SDI or HDMI video into your computer. Once it's there, OBS can stream it to basically any platform you need.
 
The Blackmagic Television Studio HD will still be at least 3x more expensive than the ATEM Mini (which connects directly to the computer for streaming). Hmmm....
 
Consider any potential syncing issues/delays with some setups (if applicable).

[Not my field, but just a thought.]
 
NorBro said:
Consider any potential syncing issues/delays with some setups (if applicable).
Click to expand...
Been thinking of that... which is a point for going with a cheaper setup to test the waters without risking too much... but also because Corona a lot of things are being delayed so who knows when it’s gonna be available...
 
I don't know a ton about it, but I just directed and TD my first live stream for a University, two cameras, plus title cards from in house IT department.
I used Live Stream Studio by Vimeo in a built out PC using Blackmagic cards, it worked great and I was impressed as hell by the software, the audio
options were cool, the video options were amazingly full featured.

The thing you'll quickly learn about streaming is all that matters is the Ethernet or wireless connection. The video part of it is super easy if you have
live TV experience as I do, it's the streaming providers, the uplink site, Ethernet config, there are a LOT of things that go wrong and guess who will
get the blame even if it's totally out of your control?

Just beware. You can read a little about my experience here https://www.hdvideopro.com/blog/ready-camera-1-take-1/
 
I do a fair bit of live streaming. I just finished up a marathon 5 day basketball tournament
(8 games per day/5 days long.) It will probably end up being the last big event held
in our state for some time as everything is getting cancelled. Anyways, you don't
need an ATEM Mini although it's certainly nice to have for the price. You can use
a computer with a software switcher and a few capture cards, I use Wirecast but
vMix, Livestream Studio, Mimo, Production Truck, OBS, Xsplit and many other software
video switching programs are also good choices. And then there are the Live CG/Titling
add on programs like NewBlue's Titler Live.

I'm working on a pretty long blog post about the big basketball tournament right now
(because all of my jobs have cancelled for the month and what else do I have to do???)
but I already have two past blog posts about doing this sort of thing:

http://alaskacameradude.blogspot.com/2017/09/you-get-what-you-pay-forand-other.html

http://alaskacameradude.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-300.html
 
The mini is a neat pice of kit - I've got mine networked so I can drag stuff into it from photoshop and the best thing is that the HDMI latency is much better than I expected - I'm not getting lip sync issues. I have added 4 HDMI splitters and a 4 input monitor device so I can use a single monitor for multi view - this was just the price ion a few splitters and £40 or so for the 4way combiner. It has a few oddities, but is a neat piece of kit.
 
paulears said:
The mini is a neat pice of kit.
Click to expand...

I got one to add into my cart along with the Television Studio HD and I agree. I don't use the switchers for live stuff, more as a clean input switcher for "single camera" shows (which almost never are) and the frame store is invaluable for me as a reference tool. Sometimes I pull temp chromakeys for visualization on set, and was pleased to see how much better the keyer is in the Mini vs the more expensive Studio HD. So I'm basically using the mini as an additional mix bus.
 
doubledark said:
nice article
Click to expand...

Thanks doubledark. I am speaking with my friend who has the Live Streaming company about opportunities to reclaim some canceled shoots this past two weeks because of the virus.
I have spoke with a couple of SMEs, one a epidemiologist and one a former exec with a large healthcare provider and both are confident that we will not be out of our current nightmare
of social isolation and the resumption of beginning to build back up to business as usual for a minimum of eight weeks and likely even longer.

All of us are probably wracking our brains on how we can get clients to hire us to keep them top of mind with their clients and to me, Live Streaming is a very good alternative way to
schedule and hype up some live events, webinars, on-line meeting and trainings. Anyone can easily stream to YouTubeLive and Facebook Live as well as IGTV with just a phone so we
are thinking of ways where we can illustrate value better by using sophisticated live multi camera streaming to present in a more professional capacity. I think the market will be growing for
this as the weeks wear on. At least I hope so because it's looking like it will be months or much longer before our traditional clients are back wanting to shoot EPKs, junkets, and promo pieces.
 
puredrifting said:
I don't know a ton about it, but I just directed and TD my first live stream for a University, two cameras, plus title cards from in house IT department.
I used Live Stream Studio by Vimeo in a built out PC using Blackmagic cards, it worked great and I was impressed as hell by the software, the audio
options were cool, the video options were amazingly full featured.
Click to expand...
I looked into LiveStream Studio a bit, it looked really nice... but subscription model. I try to avoid subscriptions if at all possible. Also, will not be making much money from this initially as I will mostly be helping music acts for symbolic fees. Doing a good deed while learning new skills... Hoping to eventually make more business out of it though.

Nice article!
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies everybody!

So, I ended up ordering the Blackmagic Television Studio HD as the Mini is still unknown shipping date even by Blackmagic according to my reseller.
Got the UltraStudio Mini Recorder to get the stream into the MacBook Pro.

My main/initial use will be for streaming live music... so sync is really important obviously. Does anyone know how much the latency differs from different cameras? From cameras with HDMI vs SDI?

My old FS700 has a very noticable delay on it's output, so I'm guessing that won't be useable. That leaves me with an FX9, A7S and some other A7-series cameras... Hoping it will be good enough!
 
Last edited:
dmitrizigany said:
Thanks for the replies everybody!

So, I ended up ordering the Blackmagic Television Studio HD as the Mini is still unknown shipping date even by Blackmagic according to my reseller.
Got the UltraStudio Mini Recorder to get the stream into the MacBook Pro.

My main/initial use will be for streaming live music... so sync is really important obviously. Does anyone know how much the latency differs from different cameras? From cameras with HDMI vs SDI?

My old FS700 has a very noticable delay on it's output, so I'm guessing that won't be useable. That leaves me with an FX9, A7S and some other A7-series cameras... Hoping it will be good enough!
Click to expand...

So 'live' on the internet isn't really live. Latency involved with using the internet means there is a delay of anywhere between a couple seconds
up to as much as 20-30 seconds. Not a huge deal if the audience is an online audience. Kind of a big deal if the audience is an 'overflow'
audience where they can actually hear the live performance.
 
Feeding my HDMI cameras into the Atem mini - via and HDMI splitter worried me until I tried it and sync doesn't seem a problem - this is using a black magic SDI to HDMI converter and ordinary amazon essentials cheap HDMI splitter. Not enough to concern me. seems to work rather well. I like the mini - it's crazily cheap, but remember many of it's facilities are software addressed, and I'm using hardly any buttons on the unit. for me, the audio side is a bit of a waste of time - and so many handy buttons with for me, pointless - for instance the keying and access to media must be done externally - this of course works fine, but being able to access these from the front panel would have been nice, but I'm sure lots of people want to control their audio via the same panel so for them, all is great.
 
alaskacameradude said:
So 'live' on the internet isn't really live. Latency involved with using the internet means there is a delay of anywhere between a couple seconds
up to as much as 20-30 seconds. Not a huge deal if the audience is an online audience. Kind of a big deal if the audience is an 'overflow'
audience where they can actually hear the live performance.
Click to expand...
That doesn't bother me. Just concerned that all cameras and the audio is syncing... If the audience watching the stream on the internet sees/hears it 30 seconds late doesn't matter...
 
paulears said:
Feeding my HDMI cameras into the Atem mini - via and HDMI splitter worried me until I tried it and sync doesn't seem a problem - this is using a black magic SDI to HDMI converter and ordinary amazon essentials cheap HDMI splitter. Not enough to concern me. seems to work rather well. I like the mini - it's crazily cheap, but remember many of it's facilities are software addressed, and I'm using hardly any buttons on the unit. for me, the audio side is a bit of a waste of time - and so many handy buttons with for me, pointless - for instance the keying and access to media must be done externally - this of course works fine, but being able to access these from the front panel would have been nice, but I'm sure lots of people want to control their audio via the same panel so for them, all is great.
Click to expand...

Have you mixed cameras with HDMI and SDI outputs? Or are all your cameras outputting SDI (then converting to HDMI)?
I don't have the luxury of using multiple of the same camera but will be using a mixed variety of cameras so I'm worried if they all have different latencies it might cause problems? But maybe most cameras are good enough in that regard and it's just the FS700 that is an anomaly? (It's output latancy seems quite extreme).

Yeah, the Mini looks great but as it's impossible to get hold of at the moment I had to go with the Television HD...
 
I have the ATEM Mini (pre-ordered back in September) and I haven't noticed any delays as long as the audio is going into one HDMI source. In other words, have the audio out from the mixing board go into one camera, as opposed to into the ATEM Mini itself.
 
vertigoanton said:
I have the ATEM Mini (pre-ordered back in September) and I haven't noticed any delays as long as the audio is going into one HDMI source. In other words, have the audio out from the mixing board go into one camera, as opposed to into the ATEM Mini itself.
Click to expand...
I read about that. But I think the ATEM Television HD has an audio delay function. And if not I'll take the audio via the FX9's audio inputs...

Biggest unknown to me is how image delay differs between HDMI cameras and SDI cameras. Or just between different camera models in general...
 
dmitrizigany said:
Have you mixed cameras with HDMI and SDI outputs? Or are all your cameras outputting SDI (then converting to HDMI)?
I don't have the luxury of using multiple of the same camera but will be using a mixed variety of cameras so I'm worried if they all have different latencies it might cause problems? But maybe most cameras are good enough in that regard and it's just the FS700 that is an anomaly? (It's output latancy seems quite extreme).

Yeah, the Mini looks great but as it's impossible to get hold of at the moment I had to go with the Television HD...
Click to expand...

I've used my FS700 with the ATEM Mini and a variety of other cameras.
As was mentioned, just choose one camera to be the 'master' camera.
Premix the audio and feed it into that camera. Send the signal from that
camera (audio and video) into the ATEM Mini via HDMI. Turn off the
'audio follows video' and the audio from the other cameras. You'll be just fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top