Event Livestreaming

[Sperkowsky]

I noticed an offseason event we are going to is looking for teams to help run a webcast.

I was wondering what kind of equipment is needed to run such a thing. Is it as simple as a few capture cards, a powerful computer and a few decent cameras? I have knowledge in video production but I know there are some complications with FRC livestreaming specific to stuff like communicating with the FMS.

Any help will be valued.

[Deetman]

At a bare minimum for a 1 camera stream with no FMS overlay, you'll need an HDMI capture card/device with audio input. There are many to chose from. To include the FMS overlay, you'll need 2 video inputs and some software capable of chroma-key to take out the background color from the FMS overlay.

Depending on where your event's FMS is coming from, it'll either have a scan converter with a few different outputs, or it'll be a DVI-D output which you can convert to VGA or HDMI as needed. If it is a district's FMS, it will definitely have the DVI-D output for the audience screen.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Deetman

At a bare minimum for a 1 camera stream with no FMS overlay, you'll need an HDMI capture card/device with audio input. There are many to chose from. To include the FMS overlay, you'll need 2 video inputs and some software capable of chroma-key to take out the background color from the FMS overlay.

Depending on where your event's FMS is coming from, it'll either have a scan converter with a few different outputs, or it'll be a DVI-D output which you can convert to VGA or HDMI as needed. If it is a district's FMS, it will definitely have the DVI-D output for the audience screen.

We could definitely do a basic livestream I have a D7000 with help from some nice glass it would work but I don't want to stop at that.

Could you link me a DVI-D to HDMI converter. It is going to be an offseason event and I have no idea where they got their field. The surrounding districts dont seem to fond of lending us their fields in my experience and AM is 1,000 miles way so im going to bet they got it from First.

xsplit has a chromakey feature so that shouldnt be an issue.

Neither of our local events have very good livestreams. 1796 stepped up to do one later in both events but it wasn't Archived to my knowledge and the entire event wasnt even filmed.

How would a setup like this be

Gopro wide angle shot of the field as main
d7000 on a shoulder rig

Usually someone would say to put a Gopro as the secondary but being its a small gym a Dslr on a tripod would most likely interfere with something.

[spydan]

Here are some related threads/ resources:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/3160
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=117319

[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

We could definitely do a basic livestream I have a D7000 with help from some nice glass it would work but I don't want to stop at that.

If you are going to only run one camera, I would recommend just the wide angle full field GoPro.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

Could you link me a DVI-D to HDMI converter. It is going to be an offseason event and I have no idea where they got their field. The surrounding districts dont seem to fond of lending us their fields in my experience and AM is 1,000 miles way so im going to bet they got it from First.

Here is the one I specified and used for MAR's video system: http://www.amazon.com/BlueRigger-High-Speed-Adapter-Cable/dp/B009W8FVCI/ref=pd_sim_pc_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=07DASWK87T4XBMAC8TS E

For a non-District FMS here are your FMS video output options:

• RGB Component Video
• Composite Video (Yellow RCA)
• SDI (May not be installed)
• VGA via the Scan Converter Pass Through Connection

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

xsplit has a chromakey feature so that shouldnt be an issue.

Agreed. OBS and WireCast would work as well.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

How would a setup like this be

Gopro wide angle shot of the field as main
d7000 on a shoulder rig

Usually someone would say to put a Gopro as the secondary but being its a small gym a Dslr on a tripod would most likely interfere with something.

This sounds good. Keep in mind your cable lengths. HDMI may or may not work well over around 20 feet depending on your capture card/device. Most BlackMagic design products won't work with anything longer than that.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by Deetman

This sounds good. Keep in mind your cable lengths. HDMI may or may not work well over around 20 feet depending on your capture card/device. Most BlackMagic design products won't work with anything longer than that.

Thanks this is more simple then I thought. For some reason I was expecting a slew of weird outdated cables. For this event 20ft of HDMI will be adequate but If we plan on helping at regional events (SBPLI for sure since we are not even going as a team this year) after that an SDI cable and some adapters sounds like it would work.

thanks.

[Sperkowsky]

Also one other thing, What pc is the better one to use.

Our robotics pc -
Amd 6300
4gbs of ram
60gb ssd
Nvidia quadro k4000

My personal Pc -
Amd 8350
8gbs of ram (16gb by the time November roles around).
Nvidia 780
120gb ssd
4tbs of HDD space (1 1tb drive 2 500gb and 1 2tb drive)

Is one of those aforementioned programs (Xslit, Obs, and wirecast) gpu intensive because if you take a look at the GPU's on both of those machines you can see why I want that.

Thanks

[adammiller3122]

I would recommend using your personal PC for this project.

[Mark McLeod]

One other piece of this is how/what do you plan to use to broadcast?

At the off-season high school you'll have to find out if they will have Internet available for your separate use.

You typically can't share the dedicated field Internet drop of an official season event if there is one. At SBPLI you'd need to pay for a separate Internet drop, or use a cell card of some sort, which is what 1796 did. If you pay for your own Internet drop, then that must be done through the event committee. You can't contract separately with the venue without the committee approval and coordination.

[Ryan Dognaux]

I personally love Xsplit. It's fairly easy and straightforward to use and the ability to create new views / re-arrange video sources is awesome. It's what we'll be using for GRC on Oct. 17th.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Here is a guide to our cheap version of doing a webcast.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.3cwabzu1ols4

This is a bit outdated. We are probably moving to xSplit this year as well.

[silverD]

I too found Allen's guide helpful.
We use a speaker stand in conjunction with an extendable painters pole to get the GoPro elevated. The AVerMedia LGP C875 captures the GoPro video feed and we use the field audio. A basic composite capture card is used to get the FMS overlay. We are using OBS to stream.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Here is a guide to our cheap version of doing a webcast.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.3cwabzu1ols4

This is a bit outdated. We are probably moving to xSplit this year as well.

Originally Posted by silverD

I too found Allen's guide helpful.
We use a speaker stand in conjunction with an extendable painters pole to get the GoPro elevated. The AVerMedia LGP C875 captures the GoPro video feed and we use the field audio. A basic composite capture card is used to get the FMS overlay. We are using OBS to stream.

Thanks guys this has helped a bunch
I have a lot of the gopro stuff already and our other team captain has an elgato. Ill buy 2 easycaps one for the FMS and one for the D7000 (Its an older camera so it natively supports composite outs.

Ill make that little painters pole gopro stand also good idea. I already have that little pole clamp in fact its my bag (Forgot to take it out after my last vacation and its fun to fiddle with while in class.

Im still going to play around with OBS vs Xsplit. I have a license for Xsplit and OBS is free. I dont like that OBS doesnt have transitions but I think I can add that with a plugin.

Thanks again guys

[AllenGregoryIV]

One of the biggest problems with live streams is the audio.
If you broadcast the music to most hosts you will likely be taken down for copyright. If you are also in charge of the sound for the event this is pretty easy to fix by just sending the audio from the field and the MC/announcers to the stream on an FX out on your sound mixer or something similar to that.

We also just do full field live streams, for inside the event having someone experienced with a shoulder rig or steady cam would be great but my preference for the live stream is to keep it the full field view so you don't miss any of the action.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

One of the biggest problems with live streams is the audio.
If you broadcast the music to most hosts you will likely be taken down for copyright. If you are also in charge of the sound for the event this is pretty easy to fix by just sending the audio from the field and the MC/announcers to the stream on an FX out on your sound mixer or something similar to that.

We also just do full field live streams, for inside the event having someone experienced with a shoulder rig or steady cam would be great but my preference for the live stream is to keep it the full field view so you don't miss any of the action.

I'm honestly thinking at the moment that im just going to have my royalty free mix playing and take out game sound all together unless I can convince them to play my royalty free sound playlist mostly consisting of monstercat. If lack of a commentator is a problem, I'm sure someone on my team would love to be a commentator for the day.

For the next thing I personally find a full field view the while time boring especially in this game. The only problem I've seen in pull ins is that they miss something like a stack falling over. Being I'm recording the go pro separately from the source I could always pull out in post. I'm planning on sending in 3 freshman and 1 Sophomore to run the cast so their will be plenty of people to write something down like "in match 16 totes fell over and the camera didn't catch it. Another consideration is that being this is an off-season event and a late one of that its probably not being used for scouting purposes.

Thanks