Broadcast Pix Unveils Entry-Level Integrated Streaming System
Broadcast Pix CEO Graham Sharp took to Zoom today to deliver an announcement that would have been the cornerstone of the integrated video production solutions provider’s presence at NAB this year had the show gone on. Sharp unveiled Streaming Pix, a new integrated streaming production solution that features the company’s familiar capture-to-delivery approach but at a modest $6,499 price point that makes it accessible to a considerably broader base of producers than other solutions in its line, which range from $13,000 to more than $50k for the top-of-the-line 22-camera system.
The new StreamingPix solution leverages some of the same components and automation technologies of Broadcast Pix’ major 2019 release, Radio Pix. Designed to enable “visual radio productions” that “turn listeners into viewers” and dramatically simplify these shows’ creation, RadioPix integrates PTZ cameras with titles, graphics, video content, and the behavioral intelligence to automate their application at appropriate times in a broadcast.
Streaming Pix brings that same approached to live-streamed video productions delivered to popular social media platforms and other streaming destinations. The new StreamingPix system targets for event, meeting, lecture, and worship streaming. Designed as a turnkey solution, it includes the following:
- a RoboPix camera with integrated control
- high-quality audio capture
- the ability to input PowerPoint and social media feeds
- Broadcast Pix’s software control UI
- a library of “ready-to-use” media assets
- “visually aware macros to make your content visually interesting”
- and support for a one-to-many streaming and a range of delivery options including popular streaming services and ascendant virtual meeting options including Zoom, Skype, Go to Meeting, and more.
In the briefing, Sharp explained that StreamingPix grew out of the company’s observation that a significant portion of the organizations looking to stream lacked traditional broadcast training—a condition that’s only become more pronounced in recent weeks as social distance measures have necessitated the virtualization of meetings, conferences, and other communications efforts. This demanded a simpler, more accessible, and more easily automated way to produce compelling streams and get them online.
Broadcast Pix also identified a need to make the company’s solutions more affordable. Recognizing that its control and automation software was the heart of its offering, the challenge was to make it work on lower-cost (and necessarily lower-powered) PCs. Sharp recounts asking the company’s hardware partners what PCs they could supply in volume, and resolving to “do a version of our software that runs on the PCs we can get, ship right away, and at a lower price.”
Figure 1 (below) shows a basic schematic of the StreamingPix setup, how media gets in, and how it goes out, leveraging Switchboard Cloud’s technology for one-to-many streaming. While acknowledging that even with the new entry-level StreamingPix solution, Broadcast Pix still doesn’t offer “the cheapest way of getting online,” he says the company designed the system for “users who want a cheap solution in a box, but also want to take streaming to the next level, to make content that’s interesting but also professional.”
Figure 1. A StreamingPix schematic
The Broadcast Pix control software shown in Figure 2 (below) can run on a touchscreen or in a browser. While it comes in a fully functional default configuration, users who find they have specific recurring needs in their productions can customize it by adding buttons to suit their requirements. Broadcast Pix touts the functional integration and automation features enabled by the software’s “behavioral intelligence” as its primary differentiators in the live production world.
Figure 2. The Broadcast Pix StreamingPix UI
“The whole point of Broadcast Pix,” Sharp said, “was to take all the elements of live production and put them in one place, with camera control and software that knows which clip to pay or graphic to call. This level of integration led to a level of automation that led to this product being really easy to use.”
Sharp noted that like virtually all other streaming solution providers these days, Broadcast Pix is getting requests from organizations that have never streamed before to help them move their meetings and events online as they adapt to current restrictions. “We were already going down this path. But hopefully we can help people doing meetings in these trying times.”
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