How do I do live video switching without being on-site?

[Natan Pakman]

I have a question. We have a 4-camera live production of a political talk show. We connect the 4 cameras via SDI cables to a Newtek Tricaster, and use the Tricaster's streaming capability and SDI output to simultaneously stream online and broadcast on a small TV channel. We broadcast in SD but record in HD 1080i for post.

My question is: Is it possible, and if so, how would it work logistically, to perform the live video switching and output at another location than the studio (say, another city or state)? So, in other words, could we have the cameras in studio but the video switcher and operator somewhere else?

[Giroud Francois]

if you want the switcher in another place than cameras, then you need to transport all camera's signal to the remote switcher. That's not good.
what you need to do is to set cameras and switcher in studio and take remote control of switcher.
Since most switcher are closed systems, it is pretty difficult, but you can use a pc based mixer so you can install some remote control software.

[Natan Pakman]

Anybody? Please bump this to the appropriate forum if this one is too general.

[Paul Cascio]

Wouldn't latency be a problem? Seems to me there would just be too much lag time.

[Ervin Farkas]

You might be able to remote control the switcher via the internet but you can't (with current technology) stream full quality video to another location - think bandwidth.

[James Clarke]

Blackmagic design television studio , you can control the swithcher remotely

[Natan Pakman]

Ervin, how would I remote control the switcher via the internet?

James, I will look into the BD TV studio.

[Natan Pakman]

I am talking to about controlling the switcher remotely, not streaming the video to another location. After live production is finished, we could just upload the footage via ftp to edit at another location.

It seems like on the one hand a Tricaster or other software switcher could be controlled with LogMeIn or something similar, but I assume latency will be an issue as Paul mentioned. But if there is a more reliable option it would be great.

James, I can't find any specific info about the ATEM's remote control capabilities. Let me know what you know.

[Seth Bloombaum]

I believe that Paul's & Ervin's point was that you need multiple streams of good video where ever you want to be controlling this switcher from. If you have video but are dealing with latency it is will be impossible to make good decisions about when to switch cameras, those decisions will be executed on the switcher later than intended. This is bad.

I suppose there might be some circumstances in which this poor performance might be acceptable, but I can't think of such a project.

Or are we all thinking too conventionally about remote switching... what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

[Natan Pakman]

Basically what I want to accomplish is to have the Technical Director who switches between camera sources off-site. I'm open to figuring out how to make that happen. Obviously latency is a huge issue for the reason you mention, so I'm curious to find a way to make it work.

And I'm curious to know if this is more easily accomplished with certain switchers (BM ATEM vs Tricaster), although we currently use a Tricaster 410.

[Natan Pakman]

And would this product be able to contribute to doing this:

ADDERLink ipeps | Adder Technology

[Ervin Farkas]

This is probably a bad idea all together. If live transmission is not your primary goal, then just record all of the streams and then do a multicam edit.

Having no one on location makes no sense to me.

[Natan Pakman]

Hey Ervin,

This program is broadcast/streamed live. There is post production done on it, but that isn't an issue. I realize it's always best to have someone on location, but I'm trying to figure out if there is a good way of doing it the way I described, with the operator off-site.

[William Hohauser]

There is no good way without a very expensive data line between home base and the remote site. Either you would have to install a remote desktop controller into the TriCaster (which may or may not interfere with the software) or you would encode all the cameras/audio and decode and switch them at home base. Controlling a computer remotely with logmeIn or other Remote Desktop software is fine for low screen use applications like word processing but once you have a lot of dynamic change on the screen (preview monitors, VU meters, etc.) the whole thing slows down. Not only would need an internet link that could maintain a high bandwidth thruput but you would have to be sure that the TriCaster could actually output this desktop feed via it's Ethernet while performing all the other functions you are asking of it.

Sony has a briefcase switcher system that also controls PTZ cameras so all you need is one operator to do camera/audio/switch. Pretty expensive to set up in HD but it works well.

[Natan Pakman]

William, thanks for the info. When you say that this would require a very expensive data line, how much are we talking and what equipment would be required?

As for the second option, encoding the cameras/audio and decoding and switching them at home base, how would this work?