Video: How NDI Enables Complex Sports Streams
By Adam Noyes
Watch the complete video of this presentation from the Sports Streaming Summit at Streaming Media West, SSS102. How IP is Revolutionizing Sports Video Production, in the Streaming Media Conference Video Portal.
Read the complete transcript of this clip:
Jack Lavey: The way that IP is so big for us–for example, let’s talk about hardware switchers. I don’t know how many of you guys deal with hardware switchers vs. TriCasters. If you’re in a hardware-switchers world, getting sources other than cameras into that versus the one or two HDMI inputs we have is impossible. It’s like, “Okay, cool. I got these HDMI things I need to get into my broadcast, and my producers are doing this on a regular basis now. Would it be graphics or YouTube videos that we wanna play?”
We just started bowling. We’re doing all 27 lanes live. That’s been our model for a long time. It looks stupid probably, but you can watch anybody at the same time. While all those 27 lanes are live, we’re pulling all those 27 signals back into one switcher whether it’s vMix, whether it’s TriCaster, or whether it’s a hardware-based switcher. You gotta use something to bring that stuff back in.
I’ve got all these cameras out there, and they’re all NDI-enabled. Whether the cameras are NDI-enabled or the computers are NDI-enabled, or we’re just using Sparks. We love the NDI Sparks. We bought a ton of the HX Sparks from NewTek. Look it up. If you haven’t seen those, look them up. That’s the magic box right now in my opinion. They’re so cheap.
Taken the HDMI signal out into a Sparks. It’s an HDMI-to-ethernet converter. It’s ethernet all the way back to this one hub. All these ethernet connections, and then into one computer. In that one computer I’m seeing all 27 signals. I’ve got a commentator who’s able to switch between those 27 signals. He knows the sport. He’s watching these guys and he’s talking about bowling as he’s switching between all 27 sports.
Let’s say Joe So-and-So is up there, and he’s getting ready to bowl. I’ve got a great clip of him on our YouTube page. Let me pull up YouTube on this computer, I’m gonna make it full screen. I’m gonna NDI it into my TriCaster, and boom, there’s this replay now that I’m rolling in real time off of just YouTube. Which is awesome.
Or if I want to show something that’s currently live on the site from a different we’re doing. Maybe there’s another bowling tournament happening over in a different state. Let’s do a little highlight on that. He’ll pull it up on his laptop. He’ll make it full screen, pull that into the TriCaster, and he’ll talk about it for a second without the audio. That’s the kind of stuff that we’re able to do with NDI that’s made our show’s a thousand times better.