Live Webcasting with NewTek Tricaster Broadcast
We produce a lot of webcasts. I’ve been reviewing all sorts of live video webcasting tools for the past few weeks. My exploration has focused on:
- hardware and software tools that allow me to mix video from multiple sources such as cameras (multi-camera shoots), laptops (in-case the people on camera want to share what’s on their screen with the online audience), online sources (such as youtube videos);
- distribution platforms such as Content Delivery Networks and web-based live video webcasting applications; and
- streaming formats such as flash and silverlight and codecs such as vp6 and h.264.
Among others, I’ve played with Adobe FMS 3.5, which we installed on a linux box @ Rackspace, Highwinds and Limelight CDNs, Telestream Wirecast, uStream Watershed, Mogulus (now Livestream), video mixers such as Roland / Edirol V-440HD and NewTek’s Tricaster Broadcast, Datavideo HS-1000, and LiveU’s LU-30, which allows us to broadcast in locations that have no internet connection (more on that later).
Today we used both uStream to broadcast a single camera innovation summit from 8am - noon and the Tricaster Broadcast to produce a multi-camera studio shoot. We used a BYOCDN webcasting platform we built inhouse using the Highwinds CDN and an instance of Adobe FMS 3.5. BYOCDN means Bring Your Own CDN. Our webcasting tool allows us to deliver everything but the video feed. We can then decide which CDN we want to use to deliver the video to our online audience. That way, the app is lightweight and doesn’t really tax the FMS server at all and we rely on the CDN to do the heavy video content delivery.
Generally, I think of webcasting in layers. And I like flexibility at all layers. The lowest layer on the stack is the local environment. I want video mixing boards that allow me to mix multiple camera angles, incorporate pre-produced on-demand videos, graphics, computer monitors, and overlays such as lower third titling of the people on camera.
Online, I want tools that can also handle many of these same functions, such as switching between two different live streams, or pulling in a youtube video.
More companies are coming to market with tools for both online control and local control for live webcasts.
The Tricaster works at the local level and is a beast. A box about the size of a Wiener Dog (I couldn’t think of anything else), the Tricaster can handle multiple SD camera inputs. It also has a cool feature that allows me to install a tiny application on any Mac or PC in our network so that the Tricaster can then “see” that computer and pull the desktop of that computer into my production.
For example, if the people on camera want to share their desktop with the viewer, I can cut to their monitor and everyone can follow all their mouseclicks and other on-screen movement.
It can do live chroma-keying and graphical overlays as well.
Most importantly, for live video webcasting, it has a “Live Streaming” capability. I can tell it where I want it to broadcast to and with a click of a button it starts to stream to that RTMP location. The Tricaster has an ethernet jack so I can connect it directly to our network.
While the Tricaster also can record to disk, which means that I can memorialize my live production and quickly post the on-demand version, the quality of the recording leaves something to be desired. And since we edit in Final Cut, I have to convert the file from its native .AVI to a .MOV to start editing. Hopefully, Final Cut will soon allow you to edit other file types.
Ideally, I could plug a video recorder such as a Firestore or nNovia into one of the 3 firewire ports and record directly to the external recorder, which records in .mov format. Unfortunately, this is not possible.
My MacGuiver work-around was to simply send the output to a Sony HDV deck and use the deck’s firewire output to send the broadcast feed to the nNovia.
Once the production was over, I plugged the nNovia to my editing station, touched up the edit (which already had lower thirds titling of all the speakers thanks to the Tricaster’s ability to lay graphics on top of the video.
That’s a totally workable solution.
My assumption is that future versions of the Tricaster will improve the internal video recording quality and provide for .mov format for all the Final Cut editors out there. In googling this issue I came across many video production forums where people were complaining about the same issue. I’m sure NewTek is listening.
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. He has many fetishes. Among them is collecting business cards.
Discussion
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We’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching on this topic as well. We’re currently doing VT5 instead of tricaster (more inputs, and it’s a stationary rig).
For distribution, we use Wowza Media Server on Amazon EC2 - for usage-based pricing, it’s really hard to beat for doing live streaming on the cheap (and we’re a non-profit, so cheap is good!), and we’ve been very pleased with the results.
i believe Amazon is about to support FMS 3.5 as well. we have FMS 3.5 set up on a box at Rackspace, but it will be nice when we can set it up @ Amazon @ a fraction of the monthly hosting cost.
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