Want to start live internet rugby show

$ausage$

Folks,

Over the last while or so I have been wanting to do a live broadcast of our local rugby club online. Easy you say well I am finding it not so easy.

Basically what I want to do is stream from my camcorder to the Ustream page on our fb page... but I also want audio and picture effects as well.

This will be outdoors or I can do it from my car but I spent a age trying to get a wifi signal which i have documented here.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057040192

So what I am looking for in my ideal world is as follows.

internally have a host a two pundits and the ability to play a picture that is showing on their screens with 3 mics.

Externally have two commentators and a camera showing the game and being able to add scored text etc to the live feed.

I would also like to be able to record the live feed so i can post online later.
Not that much eh?

I will be documenting my travels here so feel fee to shout abuse or point me in a direction you know or have seen work.

Thanks

Jonny

$ausage$

First question, what software can I use to do a green screen like background for the "presenters" inside?

Thanks

tlaavtech

First question: Do You have budget??? Have you multiple cameras or just one and what kind of camera is it?

I'm not sure if you realise how big an undertaking this is! If you have anything more than one camera then you need some means of switching between cameras - a Vision Mixer. To give you an idea of what is out there, a Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio is a good start. This will cost around 1K. It has six inputs, but only four are HDMI (from your camcorders). It will allow you to do overlays for captions, but changing the scores is a bit complicated since that needs to be changed on a computer and uploaded into the mixer. You also need a computer to control the mixer. It connects to the computer via network, so you will need a network hub.


Green screen is not easily done in a live situation without really perfect lighting and needs some external hardware for the green screen replacement. The ATEM can do this, but is ropey without really perfect lighting. It might be better to get a background printed up and sit your pundits in front of that.



The best thing to do first is to draw up a block diagram of all the pieces and how they connect together. You can then start to assign equipment to each of the blocks and come up with a budget.

Good luck,

TLA.

$ausage$

Yikes!

Thanks for your reply.
Yes I have seen the ATEM and thought there would have been a soft version about that you could use.
I have 1 panasonic camera with hdmi/av out and was not really going to use any other camera as it can all be done from one.

Having a laptop handy is not an issue and i can change the text for scores while someone else films ok but just need the software.

My budget was not going to be in the k's but was looking to slowly build up to a good setup by adding things as I went.

tlaavtech

Maybe this could be a start. I havn't used it, but might do the trick.

http://vidblaster.com/

tlaavtech

... and here's a comparison of af a few more

http://www.webtalkrevolution.com/battle-internet-tv-broadcasting-software-open-broadcaster-software-vs-xsplit-vs-vidblaster-vs-wirecast/

$ausage$

Great thanks! I will play with these for now. I think what I want to do first is have the guys talking and have a green screen of historical matches playing that will be my first goal. I may also use a HD webcamera as a second close up camera as i have a few about.

tlaavtech

One final hint - spend your money on the audio side. Buy an audio mixer, tie-mics for presenters and handheld mics for the commentators. The camcorder audio is only good enough for the pitch atmosphere audio. People will put up with average video, but poor audio will be an almost instant turn-off!!

Good Luck,

TLA.

$ausage$

Thanks

I was thinking of this already and was wondering would you go tie mic's or table top ones? I dunno why but I like the old school look of the desktop mic.

afatbollix

This is a big undertaking.

Just make sure you have a market before you spend a penny. How about uploading some videos to youtube first. How many hits do you get? If your getting a couple hundred a video check out how much of the video are they actually watching. If you put on a full match are people actually watching the full 80 minutes?

If I was you I would just video the matches and put up a highlights video onto youtube. You will get no viewers for a club game online as most of your viewers will be at the match itself!

I did this in 2012 for a motorsport event. I did it as cheap as possible but still needed £7.5k to hire in budget kit for one day. ( 4 cameras a Tricaster and a big screen)

We used one of these http://www.newtek.com/products/tricaster-40.html

To get it online we used satellite broadband as we were out in the countryside.


It can be done but it will be a lot of work and if its not ok quality with close up on players and good audio people will just not watch it.

tlaavtech

$ausage$ wrote: »

Thanks

I was thinking of this already and was wondering would you go tie mic's or table top ones? I dunno why but I like the old school look of the desktop mic.

Table tops will pick up a lot more extraneous noise, especially since you are in a club-house and not a studio. If you use them as hand-held, you will run the risk of handling noise. Your panel will also have to deal with having them in their hands, and unless they are experienced broadcasters, they may move them around a lot and give you inconsistent audio. Tie mics will give you much clearer speech and your panelists will forget about them and will be able to concentrate on speaking and not handling mics.

If you like the look of table mics, buy a few in the pound shop and don't connect them up!!