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NDI for Adobe Creative Cloud is now free!

That’s right! Newtek have remove the $10 cost for the Adobe Cloud plugin and it’s now free! You can now download it via the NDI Tools Pack on their website- http://pages.newtek.com/NDI-Tools-Pack-Download.html

Here’s our previous blog post with all the information about the Newtek NDI App-

Connecting your devices to vMix over the network with NDI

Newtek NDI vMix

Newtek’s NDI (Network Device Interface) has opened up a huge number of possibilities in live production. Being able to easily send video and audio sources over the network is nothing short of amazing. The interactivity between hardware devices and software has allowed users to adopt new ways of creating content and bettering their production.

The Newtek NDI for Creative Cloud Plugin is yet another way to bring in content to your production via NDI. This plugin lets users of Adobe products such as Premiere to playback video projects directly via NDI into live productions. You don’t need to render the entire video, just playback the video LIVE in your workspace and it will be sent via NDI.

Using Adobe Premiere and vMix in live video production.

Basically you can fire up Adobe Premiere, create an animated title and then play that back through vMix via NDI. Need to change the title? Just go back to Premiere, change the title and play again. This means you have the ability to create animated lower thirds on the fly. You don’t need to generate 10 lower thirds before-hand you can just do it all live.

You can even just use Premiere and Adobe After Effects to bring in full scale videos too. Cutting it fine and don’t have time to render, then just play out directly through NDI to vMix.

To set it up you’ll need to install the Newtek NDI for Adobe CC plugin. The plugin has now been made free and is available via the Newtek Website. Then you need to enable playout through NDI via the Preferences. You’re then set to go. Just create your project, add it as an NDI source in vMix and you’ve got your new live content.

For more information, check out our YouTube video-

Minimum System Requirements:

64-bit Microsoft^® Windows 7 operating system (OS) or better
Intel i5 Sandy Bridge CPU or better
2GB system memory
Adobe Creative Cloud membership (compatible applications include Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe After Effects CC, Adobe Prelude® CC, and Adobe SpeedGrade® CC)
Gigabit connection or better

November 16, 2016

vMix supports Blackmagic Design Mini Recorder 4K and Mini Monitor 4K!

Looking for an affordable 4K input OR output? Well the Blackmagic Design Mini Monitor Recorder 4K or Mini Monitor 4K might be for you!

You can input a 4K source into your vMix video production for under $200 US! The Blackmagic Design DeckLink Mini Recorder 4K is a low profile PCIe capture card, featuring 6G-SDI and the latest HDMI 2.0a connections so you can input formats up to 2160p30 on your live video production!

blackmagic decklink-mini-monitor-vMix

The DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K allows you to output your vMix production through the External output feature in vMix. Both cards retail for $195 US.

To view the full list of vMix Supported Hardware including other Blackmagic Design products, head over to our Supported Hardware page. vMix allows you to produce, record and stream all from the 1 PC! If you’d like to trial vMix for 60 days head you can download it from our site.

You can find out more information about the cards via the Blackmagic Design website.

vmix-studio

November 2, 2016

It’s Movember here at vMix!

Movember is here. Yes, Movember. That month of the year dedicated to growing a moustache, well not quite. It’s not just an excuse to pretend you’re ironically growing a moustache… there’s a greater cause at hand. vMix Movember

In 2003, 30 Aussies thought it would be a good idea to grow moustaches in the month of November. By the next year they formalized the idea and decided to use the month to raise money for men’s health. They just so happened to raise $54,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and just like that Movember was born! By 2005 they had raised $1.2 Million in Australia for men’s health. Since 2003 Movember has raised $770 Million! 5,232,635 people have participated in that time and it’s now a world-wide event. It has funded 1200 Men’s Health Projects and brought a huge amount of awareness to Men’s health issues.

Why are we doing Movember? Our loved ones have been affected by some of the serious health issues that Movember are tackling- prostate cancer, testicular cancer and depression. With more research, awareness and education we’re hoping that these issues will affect less and less men moving forward. They’re also a fiscally responsible organisation that ensures the donated money goes to the right place.

vMix will be donating a percentage of all software sales for the month of November to Movember. I have removed the terrible beard and will be replacing it with an equally terrible moustache. Remember to look after yourself and don’t be afraid to speak to someone if you need to!

Our Movember page can be found here- http://moteam.co/vmix

October 19, 2016

Using NDI In 4K Live Production

The latest vMix Fun Time Live Show video was produced live in 4K. Everything was produced on our studio PC and then the recording and streaming were sent via NDI to one of our other testing PCs. This PC then streamed the show to YouTube in HD whilst recording a 4K copy to be uploaded later.

NDI Setup

Typically our productions are done all on the one vMix PC. We produce record and stream via our studio PC with 4 HD cameras. As we decided to take our production up to 4K we took the opportunity to test out the possibility of sending the 4K output to another computer, all using NDI! We have both computers set up on the local gigabit network and vMix is installed on both machines. As vMix is able to send and receive NDI video, the computers were then set up to send and receive the production output via NDI. We then set up a shortcut on the 2nd vMix computer to start streaming and recording when the production started. This second computer was set up to accept the NDI output from the vMix Studio PC and then to stream in 1080p to YouTube AND record in 4K. The second machine was an i7 6700K with a NVIDIA GTX1060 and handled it all with ease.

NDI 4K vMix

Results

The results were great. We were able to stream flawlessly to YouTube in Full HD (1920×1080) and also record the show as a 4K Mp4 at 25mbit. This was then uploaded to YouTube so that viewers could watch the show in it’s full 4K glory.

ndi-4k-3-small

NDI allowed us to send and receive 4K over the local network and break up some of our production requirements. It really shows the versatility of NDI and the ways in which it can be used to enhance live video production!

See Martin talk about how we used NDI on the latest show-

October 18, 2016

4 things you won’t believe about 4K Live Production. Number 1 will amaze you! It probably won’t though.

4K live video production

We looked at 4K live video production on our latest vMix Fun Time Live Show. Yes, 4K with a software switcher. It seemed like a fun experiment to switch our entire show out with 4K cameras, titles, and videos! So…that’s what we did. We assembled all of our 4K cards, cameras, and spent time creating everything in 4K. Then we put them all together with our off the shelf PC parts.Here’s a quick shot of our components for our 4K production.

vmix-4K-live-video-production

Here’s what we learned….

Doing everything in 4K seems great until you realise it’s 4X HD!

That’s right! 4K is 4 times the size of everything that you’re used to with HD! For example our usual 4 HD camera production is now 16 HD cameras if we use 4 4K camera sources! Not only that, but you have to consider that all of your video sources are now 4 HD videos. Then add on top of that…4HD records and 4HD Streams! That turns out to be A LOT of bandwidth that your system needs to handle.

You also need to factor in that all of your sources should be 4K now. So any videos, graphics and titles that you use will need to be 4 times bigger. This becomes interesting as your need to consider the extra time needed for rendering 4K videos with your favourite NLE such as Premiere. My computer nearly caught fire with all the 4K rendering!

Off the shelf parts and the X99

For our production we went with parts we purchased from the local computer shop. We started working with the X99 as we needed the right number of lanes for the PCIe cards needed for 4K. We needed to be able to run 1×1070 GFX card along side 3x4K capture cards. We came across a few snags with the x99 and didn’t have time to fully test it out before the show. As a result we opted for a Z170 Gigabyte Gaming G1 motherboard which has a PLX chip installed and allows you to share bandwidth across the PCIe slots. This enabled us to use 3 capture cards and the GTX 1070.

In the future we look to test the X99 more rigorously and perhaps upgrade to XEON and Quadro infrastructure.

Record and Stream Via NDI

We decided that it would be best for us to split up some of the production duties to a 2nd PC. Afterall, we did want the actual live stream to work! We don’t typically like to do this but due to our limited time and not being able to use the x99 we decided it would be best. NDI to the rescue! We’ve built a mid range PC that we’ve been using for beta testing that has a NVIDIA 1060 in it. We set up vMix in that and then connected to our Studio PC via NDI and used it for streaming in HD to YouTube and Recording in 25mb 4K MP4. That’s the beauty of NDI, you’re able to easily had off duties to other PCs without any issues!

Not many people can actually watch a 4K live stream!

We realised throughout this process that sending out a 4K live stream wasn’t going to be the best idea right now. Mainly because people can’t watch it because

Their internet is too slow
They need a 4K Monitor or TV!

Youtube appears to accept a 4K stream but only allows for a 2K live playback of the stream. We imagine that this is due to the sheer processing power required to pull off 4K transcoding. There are companies out there that will do it, but it’s a fairly large exercise on their behalf. Never say never though, as we have discussed it with some streaming providers! We decided that ultimately a HD stream and 4K YouTube upload would be sufficient for now.

In Conclusion

This has been a very interesting experience indeed. It will be great to continue our advancement into the 4K realm and working out what specs will be most efficient for multi camera 4K live production moving forward!