Multi-camera livestream recommendations

VomitHatSteve

Hat STYLE. Not contents.
My band is gonna try to do a livestream show in the near future, and I'd like to get real fancy and do a multi-camera thing.

And by multi-camera, I mean phones. Android phones.

Anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? Recommendations for tools and software to use? Preferably free?
 
So here's what I've found: (some instructions)
You need to have one system (probably a computer or dedicated box) set up as a server to receive the video from the phones and stream it to Youtube or wherever.
The options that ought to work are OBS (free) and [https://manycam.com]Manycam[/url] (probably simpler since it includes both components)

Then each of the phones needs an app that can stream to that first system. If you're using OBS, you need some kind of RTMP app. (e.g. RTMP Camera - Apps on Google Play). ManyCam appears to come with its own version
 
Just some thoughts...

1. Take your time to experiment beforehand and in different circumstances. It isn't as simple as most tut's make it out to be. Try all streaming providers you can test (for free).

2. Test upload speed at the location you'll be using it from. It could work at home and fail completely at the live location.

3. Test all sorts of camera's. Phones are usually good, except in low light, or in macro. Even old webcams sometimes do better, as that's what they're designed for. Phones are made for outdoors shooting.

4. Don't go wild and try to do it in HD. Good music with an average picture will score far better than the same music that stops every now and then.

5. Try streaming to two service providers. You'll often find the one you chose doesn't work on the day you need it. If your provider is worth the salt on his French fries, it won't even cause double upload on you local connection.

OBS is very good, but it needs the right computer. Some GPU's don't work too well. It offloads some CPU intensive calculations to the GPU and when it doesn't find a compatible GPU, the performance will be severely limited. If you count on doing this often consider building a rack mount dedicated PC with a server motherboard, but not a server GPU.

OBS has a learning curve, but it also has a very good forum.
 
all good to know. My band has mentioned doing stuff like this. New territory for me.
 
2. Test upload speed at the location you'll be using it from. It could work at home and fail completely at the live location.
Fortunately, we're filming at my home studio, so we don't have to worry about that at least!
OBS is very good, but it needs the right computer. Some GPU's don't work too well. It offloads some CPU intensive calculations to the GPU and when it doesn't find a compatible GPU, the performance will be severely limited. If you count on doing this often consider building a rack mount dedicated PC with a server motherboard, but not a server GPU.

OBS has a learning curve, but it also has a very good forum.
Some of the recommendations I was reading said that OBS really needs an Intel CPU. Any idea the veracity of that? (I know I'm AMD, but I don't recall my GPU. I don't game much anymore, so it may be the mobo's onboard now)
 
Some of the recommendations I was reading said that OBS really needs an Intel CPU. Any idea the veracity of that? (I know I'm AMD, but I don't recall my GPU. I don't game much anymore, so it may be the mobo's onboard now)

I use OBS on both a computer running an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU and an entry-level NVIDIA Quadro GPU, and on a computer running an Intel i7 with an NVIDIA GTX 1080 and both of those machines have no problems keeping up with OBS at all. I also ran it on a computer running an Intel i3 with no GPU, and it worked but it really stressed out that CPU when it had to do all of the encoding plus other stuff. I'd say try it out and see.

I'm curious how YouTube's new encoder works. They added the "Go Live" button but I haven't used it yet. It might take some of the complexity and compatibility issues out of the equation for you.
 
Fortunately, we're filming at my home studio, so we don't have to worry about that at least!

You might still want to test at different hours of the day. My broadband is fine, except around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, when school is out. All the kids checking their social media tends to eat up a lot of bandwidth...

Some of the recommendations I was reading said that OBS really needs an Intel CPU. Any idea the veracity of that? (I know I'm AMD, but I don't recall my GPU. I don't game much anymore, so it may be the mobo's onboard now)

No idea. I'm always very skeptical about such remarks. And fortunately, Tadpui already sorted that out.
 
Update: The show got cancelled. I'll probably take another stab at implementing this idea at a future date, but not this month as planned.
 
Dude this is something I have wanted to do also..It is really pretty easy though I planned rather than live stream...to do the multicam / iphone thing and then EDIT the panning / switching of which shot gets seen at a ceertain time in the song e.g. drum solo, guitar solo and then audio clean up before you post..still a live recording just "produced" before release.


Here's a relatively new review
of four of the most popular apps...they are all pretty cheap and you just need iphones or ipads to shoot the video...damn cool...of course nowadays you can also buy bitchin lenses for iphones and ipads but I believe this is a really viable way to produce some very cool multicam vids...sync with your favorite DAW and you have a butt kicking video ..

When I last checked em out Recostudio was the one I was going to use but I haven't put the energy into making it actually happen yet...also Vizzywig is of interest
 
Back
Top