Tech Forum

What video camera's are suggested now for broadcasting? We are thinking of webcasting in the future. We had the college come with two camera's and another person that had done webcasting in another stake that had two laptops and a the software and video capture card. Just wondering what the future is going to bring before spending any money.

Thanks

farwest wrote:We are thinking of webcasting in the future.

Near future or "some day"? At this point I'd wait as long as possible. Most of the current setups are SD, but the future (at some point) will be HD. But currently HD setups are rather pricy for cameras, video mixers and capture cards.

russellhltn wrote:At this point I'd wait as long as possible.

I agree. Unless a really good deal falls in your lap. For now, I would also discourage solutions that require permanent installations.

russellhltn wrote:Most of the current setups are SD, but the future (at some point) will be HD. But currently HD setups are rather pricy for cameras, video mixers and capture cards.

Yes, HD setups certainly CAN be pricey, but a simple single-camera HD setup can be easily done with minimal expense. For example, setting up a member's consumer HD camcorder on a tripod in the back is often free. A 60' length of RedMere HDMI cable is around $70 at Monoprice. That can connect to the webcasting PC (borrowed), which is setup on the side of the overflow area and equipped with a BlackMagic Design Intensity Pro card. Those cards can be found on eBay in the $125 range. Audio for the webcast PC can be picked off the sound system with a VCR from the library hooked to the A/V distribution system (assuming your stake center is so equipped). The only other item needed might be an HD to SD converter box (<$35 at Amazon), so the camera's video can be injected into the A/V distribution system for the cry room TV. Total one-time cost, including misc. A/V and LAN cables, under $250.

This pretty much defines the system we will be using for our stake conference coming up in a couple of weeks.

A 60' length of RedMere HDMI cable is around $70 at Monoprice.

As a professional installer of home theater equipment, I have found the maximum distance HDMI can transmit a 1080p signal without serious degradation of the picture is only about 40'. For runs longer than that, I have had to use HDMI extenders.

The quality of the HDMI cable and shielding is always a factor but I would caution against long lengths.

michaelfish wrote:As a professional installer of home theater equipment, I have found the maximum distance HDMI can transmit a 1080p signal without serious degradation of the picture is only about 40'. For runs longer than that, I have had to use HDMI extenders.

The quality of the HDMI cable and shielding is always a factor but I would caution against long lengths.

Yes, keeping under 40' without extenders is wise. These directional RedMere Technology-enabled cables I bought (and can recommend) are active, with built-in extenders specifically designed for the length and quality of the cable material used.

speaking of cameras... I am in desperate need of help. We just installed two SD Sony EVI-D70 and EVI-D90 cameras. Upon a test run this weekend we found the image quality to be terrible! There is an inherent yellow hue on all horizontal surfaces, and the D90 is worse, with bits of purple hue, and the subject (person at pulpit) has a black shadow around them and an overall lack of definition. We thought at first it might be the long cable run causing degregation, so I hooked up a cable direct to a monitor, only to find the image quality just a poor.
Is this just the quality we get with a analog SD camera? Or could we have something else wrong? We looked at the settings screen to see if we could adjust the exposure/white balance, however it is limited. I am aware that because of fluorescent lighting, that the image will have a slight yellow/green tint to it. But what about the horizontal lines and purple and black shadow issues?
anyone else experience these issues? and how to correct for it?

There is an inherent yellow hue on all horizontal surfaces, and the D90 is worse, with bits of purple hue, and the subject (person at pulpit) has a black shadow around them and an overall lack of definition.

The Sony EVI-D70 is a terrific value for the money but it is by no means broadcast quality...after all, it IS a surveillance camera. The most critical thing in obtaining a good picture is lighting, and I suspect that is problematic for you, along with inability to override white balance settings (however, it can be done i.e like from a Sony joystick controller). If you test the camera in various lighting situations, you may see better picture quality than under florescent lights (which is more difficult for cameras to balance color under).

I know you mentioned that you connected a cable directly to the camera. I trust the video has not been split in any way. I would test both the composite (yellow) jack as well as the S-Video jack and plug them directly into the test monitor. Since you mentioned that both cameras are having problems, I am going to assume lighting is a problem.

Here is something you can try.

First, make sure there is adequate light. Observe the actual color of the lights in the chapel. Do some of them emit an orange color because of the globes, or do they have a blue tint to them? Is there a mixture of various types of lighting in the chapel (florescent, incandescent, tungsten, sunlight)? Are the windows covered, eliminating the outdoor light?

Try this experiment. Move the camera to another environment and observe the picture quality under various light sources (outdoors, under incandescent lights, etc.). The camera's color setting MAY be set and fixed to manual, such as the indoor or outdoor setting. If that is the case, one of your test conditions will look correct (thus the camera would be set to that particular setting). If the camera automatically adjusts and yields a decent picture in your test environments, then perhaps the automatic white balance feature on the camera may be getting fooled and setting the color adjustments incorrectly. This can happen when you are zoomed in on something like the pulpit which may be flooded with florescent light but the sensor of the camera is adjusting for incandescent light falling on the sensor. The result would be incorrect color balance. Make sure you are composing a picture free of light bulbs or fixtures. As a rule, you should always avoid taking pictures of lights.

We use the EVI-D70 cameras but our chapel is a mixture of several color temperatures of light from the various kinds of tubes and bulbs, so I have had a terrible time getting the color of the camera to look correct. However, when shooting exclusively in the cultural hall (where all the florescent lights are all the same), I get good color. During stake conference, we have to set the camera to Automatic White Tracing to get all three cameras close. The only way we have been able to get correct color on each color is to manually adjust the color (red and blue) as well as the iris.

Still, when everything on the Sony EVI-D70 has been adjusted correctly, diagonal lines (such as the choir seats) can have a yellow or blue blotch of color in them, but these blotches are very small. I have only seen the blotching artifacts when using the camera under florescent lights.

I hope this has been helpful. Please write back an let me know if the results of your testing.

I wanted to give a follow up to this post. We eventually got things to work okay. However, we had to return the D90 camera and replaced it with a D70 so it would match coloring and quality with the other camera. Still have issues with yellow hue and grainy images, but its acceptable now. In the future, I would not recommend these Sony D70s, as they are old technology, that looked great in their day, but now days, everyone is so critical of having a great looking picture because they are used to seeing it on their big screen HD TVs!. We can only hope the technology will soon make it possible to make long cable runs with CMOS over HDMI a practical solution.

I would not recommend these Sony D70s

Yes - Sony has replaced the EVI-D70 model with the EVI-D80, and both are the same price.

Sony increased the resolution (picture quality) in the new EVI-D80 with 550 lines of resolution instead of 470 (EVI-D70).

The new EVI-D90 model is an upgrade, which has all the same functionality as the EVI-D70, resolution of the D80 (550) but 28x optical zoom instead of 18x (both the EVI-D70 and EVI-D80 models have 18x).

The EVI-D90 retails for $150 more than the EVI-D80.

Thanks for the info that will help us in the future.