Part of the Vans US Open of Surfing held from July 27 until August 4 in Huntington Beach, California, the Vans Showdown featured some of the best-of-the-best skaters competing at one of the biggest skateboarding events of the year. Meanwhile, during the competition, fans used their smart devices and desktops to head to the Vans US Open of Surfing’s official website and watch the B Live interactive user interface’s live streams of the action at the skate park.

Giving viewers total control

In order to give fans a seamless viewing experience, New York City-based live event production company, B Live needed an encoder that could accept four discrete SDI inputs and deliver a stream as a single quad-split composition. Before B Live purchased its Monarch EDGE encoder, its user interface did not allow viewers to watch multi-camera video with continuity. Instead, the player would need to buffer each new camera angle selected by the user before the video would become available for viewing.

“Before we got the Monarch EDGE, we were doing things ‘the old way,’”said Jay Kopelman, Director of Digital Engineering for B Live. “That is to say, every time the viewer switches camera angles, it loads a new independent stream. Because we can now do quad-HD streams with Monarch EDGE, it has enabled us to feed a single 4K stream into the player. That is why it seamlessly switches on the B Live interface.”

During the competition, viewers could watch live feeds of their favorite skaters by visiting the Vans US Open of Surfing official website. The B Live user interface gave fans the chance to feel as if they were on their own decks alongside their favorite skaters at the Vans Showdown by allowing them to select from and switch between three different isolated camera angles of the athletes or the director’s cut – all thanks to the robust and dynamic H.264 encoding capabilities of Monarch EDGE.

Monarch EDGE Carves Up Live Webcasts

B Live’s camera crew captured each competing skater separately. Four 1080p30 video streams, including three isolated views of skaters and one director’s cut produced on-site by a different team, were sent back to the B Live office. There, Monarch EDGE received the three isolated feeds and director’s cut, and encoded these feeds into a single 4K, 20-Mbps stream that was then sent to the B Live platform. On the B Live user interface embedded in the Vans Open of Surfing official website, fans were able to easily decide which skater they wanted to view from the three isolated feeds available in addition to the director’s cut – all from their smart devices or desktops.

The ultimate no-fail, no-bail encoder

With Monarch EDGE’s ability to encode four 1080p30 video feeds together into one 4K stream has made B Live’s work of bringing best-in-class, live, multi-camera event footage to viewers around the world more feasible than ever. During the Vans Showdown, viewers of B Live’s interactive user interface enjoyed seamless switching between views of their favorite skaters without all the buffering required from outdated methods of displaying multi-camera content. Thanks to Monarch EDGE, fans saw every ollie, kick flip, and more from this year’s elite competition without missing a beat.

Kopelman said that B Live is also looking forward to leveraging Monarch EDGE’s upcoming closed captioning support capabilities in addition to continuing to use the device for live events with demanding quad-stream requirements. “One thing I haven’t seen on anything except Monarch EDGE is the 4:2:2 10-bit encoding. It is a hardened platform,” he said. “You know it’s going to keep working.”

Finalists at the Vans Showdown women’s competition, encoded with Matrox Monarch EDGE

Matrox Monarch EDGE will be in action at ISE 2020 (booth 11-D120) and NAB 2020 (SL 5616).

Check out the full article HERE

Learn more about Matrox HERE

Matrox has some brand new streaming technology that we should all keep an eye on.

Matrox is never far from the cutting edge. It was building GPUs before they were called GPUs. Then the Montreal, Canada, company catapulted video editing into the real-time broadcast quality domain with its family of Digisuites and NLE cards.

Since then, it’s not taken such a high profile, because its products have been more infrastructural and “problem-solving”, but no less accomplished for not being in the public gaze.

We’ve recently been using the Matrox Monarch HDX – a dual-encoder streaming “appliance” that allows you to send independent streams to two streaming hosts (say Facebook and YouTube) from a single HDMI or SDI input.

Just as you’d want from an appliance, we found it rock-solid. Highly recommended, based on our experience of it.

Matrox will be at Integrated Systems Europe next week on the 5th to 8th February, at the RAI in Amsterdam (the same place that hosts IBC every September), with their Monarch range (the HDX and the LCS) and will also be showing an early version (ie not yet for sale) of the Monarch Edge. Click here to read the full article.

Click here for all Matrox

John Brown University (JBU) celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2019, which will mark the start of a unique season of special live on-campus events. JBU is a leader in Christian higher education, providing academic, spiritual, and professional training for world-impacting careers. As part of their well-rounded scholastic experience, the university offers more than 40 areas of study along with a wide variety of athletic, cultural, and spiritual activities and events…Read More.

The Australian Screen Editors (ASE) guild is dedicated to the pursuit and recognition of excellence in the arts, sciences, and technology of motion picture film and televisual post production. It aims to promote and protect the role of the editor as an essential and significant contributor to all screen productions. One such promotional event held by the guild is the Sydney Edit Royale, where five emerging editors are given just two hours to edit and complete a one-minute music video using never-before-seen video footage and music. To make an impression, editors have to demonstrate their creativity and speed using only an Apple® iMac® computer and the editing software of their choice. At stake are two tickets to attend the Annual Australian Screen Editor Awards (The Ellies), and more importantly, an opportunity to make an impression across the industry.

Planning the event

Large in-house projector and multiviewer of contestants’
computer screens

ASE wanted the competition’s video editing content to be displayed onto a large screen for the in-house audience to follow every contestant’s progress in the competition and gain insight about each editor’s unique approach to the challenge. The same content had to be live streamed for those unable to attend, and recorded for VOD consumption after the event. To help co-host the upcoming event, the ASE guild approached Digistor, a technology and services solutions provider to oversee the technical implementation of webcasting the entire two-hour long event…read more

Click here to watch on YouTube.

CI: The way people are using social media broadcasting seems to be evolving, how is the Matrox Monarch HDX helping this growing trend?
FS: Social media has evolved. We’re seeing organizations like churches, corporations and educational institutes using social media to communicate to their intended audiences.

Now, let’s dive into the broadcast side. Live video broadcast has always been a way to distribute live content [such as] sports, sermons to a very specific audience. Traditionally, these audiences had to tune in and go to a channel and find that live broadcast.

Now, with the ability to live stream a webcast or anything to the Internet, we’re at the point where we can combine these two concepts and make it a lot more convenient for audiences to find and experience the events they want.

If we can make it so these live events are already at the social media platform that the audiences are using on a daily basis — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — that’s where social media broadcast is born, and becomes the most effective way to communicate to the audiences.

So here at Matrox, we believe that the content creators’ audiences use different platforms to get their information — whether it be personal or not — even if they belong to the same organization.

By embracing this diversity and understanding that social media preferences exist, we designed a unit, the Monarch HDX, that is able to cast one live event to different platforms simultaneously. Our customers are saying that, with the Monarch HDX being able to [do that], they’ve seen their viewership skyrocket.

Two universities in the US are using Matrox Monarch encoders, with multiple-channel and simultaneous stream/record options, to live stream and record events and lectures to their students, social media platforms and campus websites. They have been able to take on these new capabilities with the same production staff numbers, in fewer hours, and increase their audiences.

Oklahoma State University (OSU) operates a video portal called OStateTV that captures and live streams events ranging from graduation ceremonies, performances and sports, to various speakers and seminars hosted on campus. The portal has produced over 1,000 videos and delivers about 100 live streams in a year.

While OStateTV functions as a central video resource, the university also wanted to widen its audience through social media platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube. Their existing equipment – a content management system (CMS) and turnkey video production units – did not allow them the flexibility to live stream to multiple platforms in parallel.

Social Streaming

Knowing they would need dual-encoding hardware, and also aware of their limited staff and budget, they looked for a single, straightforward device that wouldn’t add steps to their live-stream workflow, and was affordable and portable. Because they had already been using Matrox products in earlier workflows, the university first checked out the Monarch HDX dual-channel H.264 hardware encoder, and stayed with it.

The university owns several Sony cameras and camcorders and a variety of portable video production switchers, resulting in both HDMI and SDI inputs to the encoder depending on the event the OStateTV team is covering. A single speaker might only output a basic one-camera stream, but pageants and assemblies involve a multi-camera live stream. The Monarch HDX encoders can be used in all types of production including outside broadcast trucks for live streaming of college sports.

At the university, the Monarch HDX is connected to a Gigabit Ethernet switch and the LAN. Taking inputs from the video production switcher, the Monarch HDX is the principal encoder that enables simultaneous streaming to different platforms such as Facebook Live and YouTube, as well as their own video portal at 720p resolution, and at bitrates from 1 to 5 Mbps…[continue reading]

Click here to watch the video on YouTube

CI: The way people are using social media broadcasting seems to be evolving, how is the Matrox Monarch HDX helping this growing trend?

FS: Social media has evolved. We’re seeing organizations like churches, corporations and educational institutes using social media to communicate to their intended audiences.

Now, let’s dive into the broadcast side. Live video broadcast has always been a way to distribute live content [such as] sports, sermons to a very specific audience. Traditionally, these audiences had to tune in and go to a channel and find that live broadcast.

Now, with the ability to live stream a webcast or anything to the Internet, we’re at the point where we can combine these two concepts and make it a lot more convenient for audiences to find and experience the events they want.

If we can make it so these live events are already at the social media platform that the audiences are using on a daily basis — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — that’s where social media broadcast is born, and becomes the most effective way to communicate to the audiences.

So here at Matrox, we believe that the content creators’ audiences use different platforms to get their information — whether it be personal or not — even if they belong to the same organization.

By embracing this diversity and understanding that social media preferences exist, we designed a unit, the Monarch HDX, that is able to cast one live event to different platforms simultaneously. Our customers are saying that, with the Monarch HDX being able to [do that], they’ve seen their viewership skyrocket…..

Click here to read the full article on Commercial Integrator

By simply copying a unique Facebook or YouTube access token from the Monarch’s powerful Command Centre control software and pasting it into their respective Facebook or YouTube account(s), users can now stream directly to their followers with the click of a mouse or push of a button.

“Matrox has been making enormous contributions to streaming and recording since the launch of the Monarch family four years ago,” said Francesco Scartozzi, Matrox Video’s Director of Sales (Americas). “In the meantime, live video over social platforms has shown itself to be a powerful medium. With this significant update to our professional encoders, users can stream their content quickly and easily to the social network of their choice.”

Availability

The latest Monarch HD and Monarch HDX firmware—with Facebook Live and YouTube Live integration—is now available to registered users as a free download from the Matrox website.

Monarch HD: Download Here

Monarch HDX: Download Here

About Monarch HD

At $995 the Monarch HD is ideal for simple installations where only a single HDMI feed needs to be webcast to Facebook Live or YouTube Live, while simultaneously recording a master-quality version for post event editing. Matrox Monarch HD takes an HDMI input from a source such as a camera and generates an encoded stream compliant with IP protocols (RTSP or RTMP). While encoding the video at bitrates suitable for live streaming, it can simultaneously record a high-quality file (MP4 or MOV) to an SD card, a USB drive, or a network-mapped drive.

About Monarch HDX

Matrox Monarch HDX is a versatile dual-channel encoder designed for today’s most demanding video delivery workflows. At $1995 USD, the Monarch HDX is ideal for use in broadcast or wherever a SDI or HDMI source needs to be sent to Facebook Live or YouTube Live, while simultaneously recording or streaming to a second location. Able to retrieve closed-captioning data from the SDI VANC, the Monarch HDX’s caption-enhanced H.264 media can be streamed to video hosting platforms such as Ustream®, media servers such as Wowza™, or a variety of content delivery networks (CDNs). MOV/MP4 files recorded with Monarch HDX preserve captions, which can be included in video on demand (VOD) or archiving workflows.

Click here for more information on all of our Matrox Monarch streaming products.

“Broadcasters have invested a number of years ago in delivering Closed Captions over the air,” explains Dan. ‘Now with Monarch HDX they can bring those captions online. The deadline is looming.”

More in the video below.

Click here to watch the video on YouTube