It is interesting to see the importance they are placing on video as part of the studio setup. Perhaps that will be the important development for the future business.

I've been asked to do live/online sessions a few times. Since I only have one camera for a full band it's a bit limited and it takes a lot of bandwith.
Also it's better to have a seperate computer for the live feed and I only have one for my DAW..
Nonetheless, it's a new niche which will have a hard time to be profitable since all the broke musicians are doing it with their phone..
But for pro musician and bands, video is getting so much attraction, it's a great marketing tool...

the cool thing about the merging technologies interfaces is they are scalable. they are the main rack unit, then they have slots for the i/o cards. ive seen an iggy pop/josh homme concert live in studio, they were even wearing headphones. its nice to see studios live rooms getting used for performance. i think youtube and streaming is an integral part of the future. i listen to youtube most of the day, whether or not i actually watch it, its a delivery format. i dont particularly care for its business model, i thik the artists get short end of the stick, but hopefully it inspires a fair and high quality delivery format.

from tech support, to album delivery, i think streaming is definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. i dont know if "live" streaming will take over, like live tv was once king, but for certain things like sporting events i can see it.

i love how tightly integrated man alive studios is. flip to PT at the switch of a button... its great to see studios on the brink of what technology can do.

ive always disliked the studio footage clients take, because its never good audio. but nonetheless people like to post things up on their social media.

i dont know much about dsd, but it seems some people really love it. even after looking into some i dont quite understand the concept behind it. 256x time the number of samples of cd quality sounds technically impressive.

i know i personally made it a point a couple years ago to integrate video into my skill set and have acquired some nice video editors. i think video is arguably more important to the average person than audio. between podcasts, interviews, documentaries, video opens up a lot more possibilities than just audio only. cameras and the related video hardware is crazy expensive, even compared to pro audio, so ill be sticking generally with video post, or capturing via Skype are a couple lower budget cameras for tutorials.

It's all software...

It would be mad to invest in pro video hardware at this point in time, imho. The old way, is very expensive. The newer way gets old very fast. And you don't really need that pro hardware to stream.

Most of the podcasters I know, use software and whatever camera's they've got. Picture quality isn't as important as audio in a studio. The video gets compressed anyway and most people uploading to social media are limited by the upload speed their provider euhmmm... provides.

Something like Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) is sufficient (and free) to produce a stream. It will require a separate PC and an operator who knows this stuff. The majority of users of OBS are gamers, but there are other uses out there too. Just have a look at the forum.

kmetal, post: 458496, member: 37533 wrote: i know i personally made it a point a couple years ago to integrate video into my skill set and have acquired some nice video editors. i think video is arguably more important to the average person than audio. between podcasts, interviews, documentaries, video opens up a lot more possibilities than just audio only. cameras and the related video hardware is crazy expensive, even compared to pro audio, so ill be sticking generally with video post, or capturing via Skype are a couple lower budget cameras for tutorials.

I started to do video too and I enjoy it. It's the live streaming audio/video that I'm not ready for yet. At some point, I'd like the investment of time and money to payoff if I go that route. But I doubt, I'd be able to charge extra for video... The curse of being a small studio I guess.

cyrano, post: 458501, member: 51139 wrote: Something like Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) is sufficient (and free) to produce a stream. It will require a separate PC and an operator who knows this stuff. The majority of users of OBS are gamers, but there are other uses out there too. Just have a look at the forum.

I tried OBS once, it was not simple to setup and yes clearly needs a seperate computer if we're tracking a full band.
Other important thing is the upload speed of your internet access. I have 40down/10up and it seemed to be limiting. The result I got on facebook live was not the quality I expected so that's why I put the project aside for now...

cyrano, post: 458501, member: 51139 wrote: Something like Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) is sufficient (and free) to produce a stream. It will require a separate PC and an operator who knows this stuff. The majority of users of OBS are gamers, but there are other uses out there too. Just have a look at the forum.

i have OBS, but havent put it through its paces yet, i also have plex and VLC media player. OBS seems to be a highly capable peice of software, when i compared it to the titles like wirecast, and vmix, which are other popular streaming programs.

cyrano, post: 458501, member: 51139 wrote: Most of the podcasters I know, use software and whatever camera's they've got.

even a fairly simple logitech HD webcam can look surprisingly decent. same with a simple iphone. theres not the depth of field, or high quality zoom, that youd get from something like a cannon over the shoulder, but thats not necessarily important to tutorials and podcasts, which seem to rule the Tube these days. i think things change a little when your talking about a documentary, or something destined for Netflix. Marcos videos look really good and he uses a cannon dslr i believe. fro my perspective im interested in having multiple angles, and good flow to the video's rather than hollywierd quality picture.

pcrecord, post: 458502, member: 46460 wrote: I started to do video too and I enjoy it. It's the live streaming audio/video that I'm not ready for yet. At some point, I'd like the investment of time and money to payoff if I go that route. But I doubt, I'd be able to charge extra for video... The curse of being a small studio I guess.

yeah i dont see the investment paying off for any but the elite. Avatar has updated their lighting and video capability. my focus on the video side is more for conferencing, communication, as part of remote consultation services, and remote realtime mixing. ive done consults over the phone, and sometimes its hard to get details across on studio construction, or menu structures for daws. lol nevermind when they call from the stage.

i dont know how much ill make off of music in the future, but i look at these things as learning experiences and engineering projects, im always looking to improve things and expand my knowledge base. i think alot of people like to mix their own stuff, so i dont know how practical realtime remote mixing will be. my idea is for someone to be able to login to the website, load in a project, and use the DAW and plugs and instruments, remotely. maybe because they dont have certain instruments, or maybe they're working on a project that uses a daw they dont have, or maybe because they are in between systems, or just need to do a quick mix tweak outside of the studio. it should be possible to remotely control a very powerful master/slave/slave system, via remote desktop or virtualization thru something as simple as an ipad.

OBS has some amazing features.

The fact that it's free and is cross-platform are certainly cool. The downside of open-source software is that it can be hard to learn because there is never any great documentation. However, in this case the good news is that because of the nature of OBS, there are loads of videos of people using OBS - while they're showing you how to use OBS. It's ability to project / broadcast any window on your computer fullscreen, with graphic overlays, lower thirds, and /or any camera source(s) is pretty impressive. It takes some trial and error and some YouTube tutorials to figure out, but it's well worth the effort.

I mostly use VLC to open and reformat existing video files, but I do have some clients who use it for capture.

Currently I'm working on incorporating a BlackMagic Design hardware-based 8-input video switcher. I want to switch between live cameras and a computer running OBS as a graphics / text source. I'm using a BMD standalone solid-state video recorder for the field capture and have a separate BMD downconverter to convert the 1080p to 720p for smooth live streaming.

dvdhawk, post: 458508, member: 36047 wrote:
Currently I'm working on incorporating a BlackMagic Design hardware-based 8-input video switcher. I want to switch between live cameras and a computer running OBS as a graphics / text source. I'm using a BMD standalone solid-state video recorder for the field capture and have a separate BMD downconverter to convert the 1080p to 720p for smooth live streaming.

hey just wondering if how your going to stream, like thru your website, facebook, youtube, ect?

I’ve got church clients who do all of those things, but until recently I’ve tried to stay out of that realm. I’ve seen a significant increase in people asking me to get them set up for live streaming, so it was time for me to buy some new HD gear and learn the ins and outs of streaming. I started doing live 3 or 4 camera (standard def) productions and NLE editing back when y2k was a thing. So I get that part, but the streaming aspect of it is all new to me. I got a Blackmagic Design Web Presenter downconversion box that should (in theory) take almost all the guesswork out of it for me.

Facebook and / or YouTube are the main concern for me at the moment. The maiden voyage with this system will probably be a live FB thing where people can ask the band questions about the album (or whatever) in realtime.

I’m trying to find time to get everything set up to do a dry run soon. “Lights, cameras, action” is a catchy phrase, but also just part of the to-do list. “Backdrops, stands, switchers, monitors, recorders, and downconverters,” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I’ve got a power conditioner, the switcher, the record deck, and the downconverter racked up in a tidy little 4U rack (with room to spare). Throw a 24” HDMI display on top of it and that’s done in 2 minutes. It’s the everything else...

dvdhawk, post: 458525, member: 36047 wrote: I’ve got church clients who do all of those things, but until recently I’ve tried to stay out of that realm. I’ve seen a significant increase in people asking me to get them set up for live streaming, so it was time for me to buy some new HD gear and learn the ins and outs of streaming. I started doing live 3 or 4 camera (standard def) productions and NLE editing back when y2k was a thing. So I get that part, but the streaming aspect of it is all new to me. I got a Blackmagic Design Web Presenter downconversion box that should (in theory) take almost all the guesswork out of it for me.

Facebook and / or YouTube are the main concern for me at the moment. The maiden voyage with this system will probably be a live FB thing where people can ask the band questions about the album (or whatever) in realtime.

I’m trying to find time to get everything set up to do a dry run soon. “Lights, cameras, action” is a catchy phrase, but also just part of the to-do list. “Backdrops, stands, switchers, monitors, recorders, and downconverters,” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I’ve got a power conditioner, the switcher, the record deck, and the downconverter racked up in a tidy little 4U rack (with room to spare). Throw a 24” HDMI display on top of it and that’s done in 2 minutes. It’s the everything else...

awsome man! it'd be great if you could share the in's and out's (lol no pun intended) of it with us. i think we can all benefit from your experience. streaming doesnt seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. theres some parallels between audio and video, but im sure there's plenty of unique aspects to it putting it all together. it'd be fun to tune into the broadcast as well.

Configuring network stuff is not my strong suit, but I'm teachable. I just don't think social media is an area I can afford to ignore any more.

My head spins when I think about how much bandwidth and storage much be involved in uploading and archiving all the crap people stream live every day.