Audio Visual Insights for Web-Conferencing and Live Streaming

It's been almost two months of successful live streaming of our Friday webinars and I am ecstatic over the results! Now that video conferencing tools have become super easy to use, pulling a software like Zoom into a live streaming solution like vMix or Wirecast creates a video broadcasting solution with almost limitless potential for so many verticals including: Broadcast, Education, Houses of Worship, and any type of Sales or Marketing event!

The benefits are of a system like this are deeper than they might seem at first glance. I now save hours of post production time by managing my camera switching, overlays and titles live. So I completely skip video rendering in Adobe After Effects (a expensive and processor intensive application) and we serve high quality live streaming content to viewers all around the world! I don't have to worry about any huge file storage on my personal computer since YouTube Live offers an unlimited amount free video storage in the cloud. Pretty huge benefits right? How about the ability to add up to 50 live video sources to your broadcast with a simple invitation to my Zoom conference, installing the zoom app on a iPhone or plugging in a USB cable to PC. I really feel like I died and went to live broadcasting heaven :)

Last week we demonstrated a live drone capable of transmitting wireless HD video over 1 mile. For the first time we saw the potential uses cases for video conferencing and live streaming extending far beyond our normal boardroom setting. What if a video conferencing software like Zoom, also became a standard in the broadcast industry as a way to merge up to 50 HD video sources on-demand from anywhere in the world? It works for us because we we have a interactive live broadcast that encourages participation from our viewers. Could a simple $15/month zoom license rival the hardware based Skype Broadcast solutions called Skype Broadcasters? The bandwidth needed to pull off HD conferences from around the world is here and it's only getting better with time. .

When you live stream a video conference it's important to understand how you can work with Iayers of video. This is truly a "broadcast" concept where the operator is choosing which sources they want to send, overlay, fade or mix into the live broadcast. We technically have the ability with zoom to select video feeds from a pool of up to fifty 720p choices on the fly. Most traditional broadcast systems rely on hard wired HD-SDI or HDMI video connections. While hard wired connections still provide superior 1080p60fps quality, industry leaders such as NewTek and Wirecast are already working on a future that involves more IP streaming than physical connections. With 5G on the horizon and bandwidth access increasing world wide the future for live video streaming looks bright. NewTek is regarded as the industry leader here and has recently announced a attempt to standardize the industry with a NDI for IP streaming in broadcast at the International Broadcast Conference in Amsterdam this year.

When it comes to working with traditional hard wired devices such as the HDMI output on our DJI Phantom 3 drone I always reach for a Epiphan Frame Grabber. We normally use the AV.IO for HDMI and the SDI2USB for HD-SDI connections. These frame grabber are great for converting digital or analog video to USB for live mixing on a computer with a software like Wirecast or vMix. We can then work with our video signals and send a complete video mix via RTMP to YouTube Live. 

December 18th, PTZOptics will host Epiphan Systems Dave Kirk, VP of Engineering. Epiphan and PTZOptics recently released a co marketing video spotlighting the Epiphan Pearl and PTZOptics camera integration ideal for lecture capture in the education space. Epiphan Systems will demonstrate just how easy it is to incorporate almost any HD video feed into Zoom during our live broadcast. We will be demonstrating how you can live stream a DJI Phantom 3 drone in a Zoom Video Conference. Plus we are going to demonstrate the new Crestron MMX-600 USB microphone mixer with two Wireless lapel microphones from Shure!