About five or so weeks prior to the first of our district’s
three high school graduations, my team was tasked with live streaming all three
events, which would take place in two separate locations. The difficult part was that we did not have
the equipment needed and we would have to piece together a mobile production
studio very quickly, leaving little room for testing and training once all the pieces
were received and put together.
While I have some background with A/V and video, putting on
major events like this are a team effort, so I knew that we would have to get
several people involved in planning and testing, leveraging everybody’s skill
sets.
We initially conducted some online research and consulted
our peers through a listserv to see how they broadcast their events. We had come across what we thought to be a
very cost effective video production switcher from Blackmagicdesign, called the
ATEM
Television Studio, which looked like it would work well as the core
component for producing the live event.
Several people on the listserv confirmed that this is a great device and
would work well for us.
One thing that became apparent quickly was that the ATEM
only accepted HD video inputs through HDMI and through SDI, but all we had was a
couple of older cameras that did not output in HD. While we wanted to keep costs relatively low,
we felt that investing in older analog technologies would be a mistake, so we
knew we need to go the HD route.
We found a loaner HDMI camera from our high school campus
and we used a very low cost consumer Sony HDMI consumer camera for
testing. We ordered several HDMI cables
of different lengths and costs. This is
where we found our first major issue, and by this point we were several weeks
into the process and couple of weeks from the first graduation. We found that only the short (and low cost)
HDMI cables worked with the good cameras, while the only camera that worked
with the long amplified HDMI cables was the low cost Sony, which was really
meant to be either used as a wide shot cut camera or as a backup camera. We had also purchased a great new Panasonic
HD camera, the G-AC90
AVCCAM HD handheld camcorder, and when it arrived, we tested it and it only
worked with the short cable. We knew we
had an issue, as it would be necessary to have one camera at least 100 to 150’
away from our ATEM production studio. We eventually stumbled on the solution in the
recesses of internet forums; The Blackmagic
Design HDMI to SDI Battery Converter was the key. This device allowed us to hook up a standard
short (or longer if needed) HMDI cable to our video camera, and connect some
really long (and less expensive than HMDI) SDI cables to move cameras away from
our ATEM.
The next issue we found was that we needed a way to bring in
analog audio from the sound boards at both graduation venues and convert that
audio to digital. This could be done on
a good HD camera like the Panasonic mentioned earlier or the Sony I will
mention further into this write up. But
we wanted the audio separate from the cameras if possible, so once again the
Internet saved us and recommended the Behringer Ultramatch
Pro, which allowed us to convert analog audio from the events’ sounds board
coming in on XLR cables, and then output digital audio over a RCA to the input
on the ATEM.
Another choice we had to make was choosing a service
provider for the live streaming of the event.
One of my colleagues looked at several services and settled on
Livestream.com, since they had a
plan we felt was affordable, and which offered predictable pricing, unlike some
competitors who charged more based on how many people viewed the stream. We had no idea how many people would tune in,
and we did not want to overspend on the streaming. Livestream.com also recommended and showed
the ATEM as a product it certifies to work with their service, which we felt
was a major plus. A major benefit of the
chosen Basic plan was that we were able to setup Livestream.com to send data to
our free Google Analytics
account, allowing us a very good view into how many people watched our events,
and to also know where they were located.
Another one of my awesome colleagues assembled the aforementioned
gear and some additional parts, which included:
- Gator mobile pop up portable console rack cart
- Laptop shelf with a laptop
- Small network switch
- Behringer PMP1680S – this will allow us to use this mobile cart to produce our own live audio events
- TrippLite 12 Outlet Rackmount Power Strip RS-1215
- External HDMI monitor for use with the ATEM (this was not on the cart)
- Handheld radios with mic/headsets for team communication during the live events
The end result was our mobile live production studio
pictured below:
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| Judson ISD’s mobile production studio |
Our first streamed graduation was an event in our Performing
Arts Center. We setup and tested a day
prior and all worked well. But we knew
from this that our low cost consumer Sony camera was not going to be sufficient
long term. Our remote stream test watcher
commented on how much worse the video looked when we were using this camera. We also pushed the Panasonic’s optical zoom
to near its max on this event, so we knew that the next two graduations in the
Alamodome would require a much larger optical zoom, so we went ahead and bought
one more very good Sony HDR-AX2000
High Definition Camcorder. Both this
camera and the Panasonic produced fantastic pictures event in reduced lighting
situations and both featured XLR audio inputs, which we knew we would end up
needing as well.
Our team learned fast from our trials and from each
successive graduation. The events went
extremely well, and the quality of
the LIvestream.com broadcasts and our production looked very good. We had a huge success of the events with over
3600 unique viewers, who spanned all 50 states and over 30 countries around the
world. We knew we had many military families
that would be watching, but we truly did not anticipate this level and breadth
of viewership.
There are a few things we learned from the process that we
want to implement for next year. One is having
a much more powerful PC powering production, which will allow us to send a full
HD and separate mobile stream. We will
be looking at a rack mounted might powered Intel i7 based PC with a rack
mounted KVM to accomplish this.
We also found that we need to have a chat moderator watching
the stream and chat as the live graduations unfold. During one of the events, a couple of malcontents
started saying inappropriate things in the chat, amongst the great comments
like “I just watched my granddaughter walk the stage from here in Puerto Rico.”
We were able to ban these users form the
chat, but next time we need to dedicate someone to this task.
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| Panasonic camera pointed towards ATEM production studio in the Alamodome |
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| Live graduation unfolding in the Alamodome |
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| Live Google analytics feed during a graduation |
