Streaming and Live Feeds.

With some difficult times ahead and the need for most of us to minimise contact with others there has never been a greater need for streaming and online video services that now.

I’m setting up some streaming gear in my home office so that I can do some presentations and online workshops over the coming weeks.

I am not an expert on this and although I did recently buy a hardware RTMP streaming encoder, like many of us I didn’t have a good setup for live feeds and streaming.

So like so many people I tried to buy a Blackmagic Design Atem, which is a low cost all in one switcher and streaming device. But guess what? They are out of stock everywhere with no word on when more will become available. So I have had to look at other options.

The good news is that there are many options. There is always your mobile phone, but I want to be able to feed several sources including camera feeds, the feed from my laptop and the video output from a video card. 

OBS to the rescue!

The good news is that there is a great piece of open source software called OBS – Open Broadcast System and the Open Broadcast Studio streaming software.

OBSDemoApp2321 Streaming and Live Feeds.
Open Broadcast Studio Software.

 

OBS is s great piece of software that can convert almost any video source connected to a computer into a live stream that can be sent to most platforms including Facebook and YouTube etc. If the computer is powerful enough it can switch between different camera sources and audio sources. If you follow the tutorials on the OBS website it’s pretty quick and easy to get it up and running.

So how am I getting video into the laptop that’s running OBS? I already had a Blackmagic Mini Recorder which is an HDMI and SDI to thunderbolt input adapter and I shall be using this to feed the computer. There are many other options but the BM Mini Recorders are really cheap and most dealers stock them as well as Amazon. it’s HD only but for this I really don’t need 4K or UHD.

Blackmagic-mini-recorder Streaming and Live Feeds.
Blackmagic Mini Recorder HDMI and SDI to thunderbolt input adapter.

 

Taking things a step further I also have both an Atomos Sumo and an Atomos Shogun 7. Both of these monitor/recorders have the ability to act as a 4 channel vision switcher. The great thing about these compared to the Blackmagic Atem is that you can see all your sources on a single screen and you simply touch on the source that you wish to go live. A red box appears around that source and it’s output from the device. 

atomos_atomsumo19_on_set_in_studio_4kp60_1576110181000_1334246-e1584607746226 Streaming and Live Feeds.
The Atomos Sumo and the Shogun 7 can both act as 4 input vision switchers.

 

So now I have the ability to stream a feed via OBS from the SDI or HDMI input on the Blackmagic Mini Recorder, fed from one of 4 sources switched by the Atomos Sumo or Shogun 7. A nice little micro studio setup. My sources will be my FS5 and FX9. I can use my Shogun as a video player. For workflow demos I will use another laptop or my main edit machine feeding the video output from DaVinci Resolve via a Blackmagic Mini Monitor which is similar to the mini recorder but the mini monitor is an output device with SDI and HDMI outputs. The final source will be the HDMI output of the edit computer so you can see the desktop.

Don’t forget audio. You can probably get away with very low quality video to get many messages across. But if the audio is hard to hear or difficult to understand then people won’t want to watch your stream. I’m going to be feeding a lavalier (tie clip) mic directly into the computer and OBS.

I think really my main reason for writing this was really to show that many of us probably already have most of the tools needed to put together a small streaming package. Perhaps you can offer this as a service to clients that need to now think about online training or meetings. I was lucky enough to have already had all the items listed in this article, the only extras I have had to but are an extra thunderbolt cable as I only had one. But even if you don’t have a Sumo or Shogun 7 you can still use OBS to switch between the camera on your laptop and any other external inputs. The OBS software is free and very powerful and this really is the keystone to making this all work.

I will be starting a number of online seminars and sessions in the coming weeks. I do have some tutorial videos that I need to finish editing first, but once that’s done expect to see lots of interesting online content from me.  Do let me know what topics you would like to see covered and subject to a little bit of sponsorship I’ll see what I can do.

Stay well people. This will pass and then we can all get back on with life again.

6 thoughts on “Streaming and Live Feeds.”

  1. Hi Alister,
    Doesn’t the fs5 have an internal streaming capability? If you are considering some new tutorials concerning streaming could you touch upon the process for this? Esp to platforms such as FB live etc.
    Much appreciated.

  2. Hi Alister. Thanks for posting the info. I look forward to watching your streams!

    I was doing a similar setup a while back with the Odyssey 7Q+ with Apollo firmware, but found it quite unreliable for recording. It worked great as a monitor and switcher, but the recording would fail in some way about 25% of the time on long recordings (corrupt video, corrupt audio, bad headers, audio out of sync – you name it). In your experience is the Atomos 7 a reliable Prores recorder?

  3. I recently purchased a BMD Mini Recorder, but haven’t been able to get my MacBook to recognize it as a video source. It would be nice if the Desktop Media app showed video to confirm that it worked. Everything I see online says to use PhotoBooth to change the default camera from the built-in one to the Mini Recorder, but PhotoBooth only shows it as a microphone. How did you do it?

    1. Have you tried using the Blackmagic Media Express application to see if that can see the incoming video?

  4. Alister, wondering about hardware vs software encoders. OBS and others are great, currently testing it myself. But also looking at a hardware solution. Also the ATEM mini looks like a unicorn right now. Tough to find one anywhere. Thanks for doing what you do.

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