Tech Forum

For those of you that have used both the Vidiu Teradek box, and the Wirecast option, which do you prefer?

Currently, our stake has used the Teradek box provided by the church. While it is simple to hook up, there always seems to be issues. Recently, we had to power cycle the unit multiple times so that the encoder was ready. I can't seem to broadcast going through the church's firewall at the building and must directly connect to the modem (even with our AP's turned off).

Im wondering if switching to a more building specific option like building our own computer just for broadcasting and using wirecast would be better and help us avoid issues.

Thoughts?

I have been able to do 2 stake conferences just fine with the Vidiu Usually it would be good to have the latest firmware for it, but I saw a post on this forum that firmware 2.4.8 and 2.49 are bad. The latest firmware I used was 2.4.7 and it worked just fine.
Double check what firmware version you have for the Vidiu. The GSC can provide you details on how to reset the device and then update to just 2.4.7. My first Vidui I had was just a bad box, and the replacement box I receive has worked just great. If after checking the Firmware version and if that does not resolve it check with the GSC about troubleshooting the hardware piece.

I'll be soon testing my Wirecast enabled PC with the church's portal and let you know how it goes. I just have to work out the ingestion settings to keep their servers happy.

Just before my last stake conference, I had to upgrade the Vidiu unit to I believe 2.4.9 even though things say don't do it. I had trouble connecting the Vidiu to the server and once I fully upgraded the VidIu unit, things have seemed to be stable. So upgrade first and try again.

Meetinghouse Webcast Portal page no longer has the warning about 2.4.8 and 2.4.9 so it appears they are working now.

I have used both, and been able to get both working. However we currently use Wirecast, and just did a stake conference and it worked flawlessly. Wirecast has the advantage of of using software overlays, so that is why we went with it. If using Wirecast make sure you have a good machine, so that the CPU is mainly staying at 50% or less. I bought a used Dell with a 3rd Gen i7 and 16gb of ram for $350 and it was able to do the job well. We used one mounted camera and another camera mounted on a Tripod, and mixed in the video with overlays.

gldavis1111 wrote:I have used both, and been able to get both working. However we currently use Wirecast, and just did a stake conference and it worked flawlessly. Wirecast has the advantage of of using software overlays, so that is why we went with it. If using Wirecast make sure you have a good machine, so that the CPU is mainly staying at 50% or less. I bought a used Dell with a 3rd Gen i7 and 16gb of ram for $350 and it was able to do the job well. We used one mounted camera and another camera mounted on a Tripod, and mixed in the video with overlays.

My stake is looking into using wirecast for our stake conference soon. I was wondering, did you have to get multiple USB capture devices for your 2 cameras or just connect them via USB from the camera? I was also curious on your stake's complete set up and it may inspire my stake president on a set up that works along side with the current webcast setup.

Thanks!

johnny2007 wrote:...did you have to get multiple USB capture devices for your 2 cameras or just connect them via USB from the camera?

The cameras needed for webcasting typically won't have USB output. Those are more common on webcams. You'll most likely be dealing with either HDMI or composite (baseband) video. These have to be "captured" using either a USB device (USB 3.0 is recommended for HD signals), or a video capture PCI-E card. I use a desktop PC with 2 Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards (1 for each camera). They were about $70 each from ebay. Obviously, there's more to it than that, but hopefully this will give you some input to see if you even want to go down this road.

Mikerowaved wrote:

johnny2007 wrote:...did you have to get multiple USB capture devices for your 2 cameras or just connect them via USB from the camera?

The cameras needed for webcasting typically won't have USB output. Those are more common on webcams. You'll most likely be dealing with either HDMI or composite (baseband) video. These have to be "captured" using either a USB device (USB 3.0 is recommended for HD signals), or a video capture PCI-E card. I use a desktop PC with 2 Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards (1 for each camera). They were about $70 each from ebay. Obviously, there's more to it than that, but hopefully this will give you some input to see if you even want to go down this road.

Thanks! I have been doing some research for a while already but I know that we will be using at least 2 cameras (1 Sony hd handycam and the chapel’s ptz camera) . The SP might go for 3 but I have to see if he is willing to have the stake spend more money on a good simple setup to use wirecast. Eventually , the plan is to use wirecast for webcasting stake conference, but we will see how the Vidiu setup with 2 camera will work out. (Still researching on how to properly do that)

There is one downside to WireCast. You cannot display realtime video to any TVs in the same bldg - the video will significantly lag the audio. This was one reason we opted to buy a Roland V-1HD Switcher (realtime video/audio switcher $900) and use the free VidiU encoder.