Workflow Tour: Livestream Studio on the Studio HD51

In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the interface that the Livestream Studio switcher software is running on the Studio HD51 hardware platform. I'm not going to cover all the functionality, but I will run through the operational workflow and talk about some of the key new features.

Exploring the Interface

Let's start with a quick tour of the relevant portions of the studio interface. The HD51 has up to 13 switchable input channels. Figure 1 (below) shows 8 channels in use. In this project, I'm not using 3 of the 5 available camera inputs, or the two color bar inputs.

Figure 1. 8 of 13 possible inputs in use.

You can input as many as 5 HDMI cameras. For this project, I'm using only two, the Front and Side views shown in Figure 2 (below).

Figure 2. My two active camera inputs (Front and Side) visible in the main Livestream Studio UI. Click the image to see it at full size.

Configuring Graphics Inputs

To the right of the video feeds in Figure 2 you can see the graphics tracks (GFX1 and GFX2) that contain titles and PiP videos. Figure 4 (below) shows GFX1 selected. You create titles and add them to the selected input window by clicking the Add Text button (Figure 3, above Figure 4) and typing in the text and configuring it.

Figure 3. Click here to choose a text mode and add text.

Figure 4. Type and configure your text here. Click the image to see it at full size.

Click the camera icon to the right of the Add Text icon (bottom panel in Figure 4) to add a PiP, and then drag the edges of the bounding box that appears to resize and position the frame. Then click the down-arrow button just above the bounding box and choose the camera source from the Source dialog that appears (Figure 5, below).

Figure 5. Configuring your PiP.

You can add images to a graphic using the middle button in the panel at the bottom of the window (Figure 6, below). When you click the button it opens a browser window where you can navigate to and open the image you want to use. When the image appears in the GFX window, you can resize it, position it, and adjust its opacity, shadow, and border as desired.

Figure 6. Adding an image to your graphic.