The Streaming Road Warrior: How to Overcome the Challenges of Portable Live Production

Tips and Tricks for Portable Live Productions

Now I'm going to discuss some of the tips and tricks that I've learned in doing live productions over the years that might be helpful to you in your own production and streaming work. I'll sloe explain why I think they're handy tips for live production.

SDI, Not HDMI

My first suggestion is to work with SDI cameras. You can get a lot of affordable HDMI cameras these days for live production, but they tend to be a bit difficult to use with regards to cabling. If you don't necessarily know what a venue is going to be like, where the camera is going to be in relation to the switcher, you need to make sure that the cabling solution is flexible enough to handle those long distances. SDI is expressly designed for that; you can run up to 100 feet of cables, and you can get slim-line SDI cables that are easy to move around corners. They also have a locking connector. Anyone who has had experience with the mini-HDMI ports available on video cameras these days knows how much of a pain in the neck they can be.

As I mentioned, SDI cables are now available in slimline thin models that do full HD and are great for travelling, since they're lightweight. I use slimline SDI cables exclusively when I'm setting up cameras at various trade shows.

Multiple Cameras, Same Model

In addition to going with SDI cameras, if you're at the stage where you're planning to build your own live production solution from scratch and you haven't yet bought the cameras, I would highly recommend looking at all the cameras out there and choosing one particular camera model for your entire setup. If you’re doing a four-camera shoot, use four cameras of the exact same brand and model.

The reason to get identical cameras is for color correction and white balance. Every camera is a little bit different. If you choose the same model, you won't have to spend time matching your cameras in software or in the switcher or in the color correction in the cameras. They will all be matched by choosing the same color balance and white balance settings in camera. That's a huge time saver.

As far as specific models go, the two that I've personally used and really like for their portability and for the built-in SDI ports they have available are the Sony PXW-X70 and the Canon XA25. They're both really nice compact cameras, but they also have the full professional feature set, including SDI. Both are available for less than $2,500.

Keeping Track of Your Gear

This tip might be obvious to live production veterans, but I recommend keeping an inventory checklist. I’ve found this especially important all the various cables and adapters I might use in a live production. When I've packed my gear for a particular show and it comes time to unpack it back at the office, a complete checklist helps me make sure everything is still there, and lets me know what I need to track down at the venue if something went missing.

Along similar lines, marking equipment with colored tape is also very helpful. In particular for the NAB live show we did for Teradek, there were three sets of crews, each with very similar equipment, all working within the same area. For example, we at vMix had our own equipment, and Teradek had their own equipment, and they were pulling out SDI feeds, and they had cables and equipment and adapters as well. There was also the live production crew, the guys that were doing the live switching, and they had their own audio mixer, monitors, cables, cameras, and so on.

With all of this gear in use on the same live shoot, it was very easy for us to mix up our equipment. Fortunately, each of our teams had color-coded equipment, so it was very easy at the end of the show, after four days, to quickly pack everything up.

Get Graphics and Titles in Advance

One thing that is very important from a quality perspective is to request graphics and videos from your clients ahead of time. If they give you a low-quality MP4, acquiring and reviewing the clip in advance of the event gives you time to request a higher-quality MP4. Perhaps they gave you a 720 clip, but you want to do a 1080 production for archival purposes. You can go back to them and request those HD video clips, or higher resolution graphics so that the final production you hand over to the customer is at a lot higher quality, thanks to that forward planning.

Choosing and Testing Streaming Bitrates

This probably goes without saying, but you need to test the network speed of the venue if you're doing live streaming. I've worked in venues where, one week, they’ve been able to provide 8 Mbps for streaming (which means we would probably do a 5-6 Mbps stream to allow sufficient headroom when streaming at full HD), but then the next week, the bandwidth allocation dropped down to 5 Mbps. Continually testing the network ensures that you can pick and choose the best bitrate for the stream ahead of time.

Finally, pay careful attention to choose a streaming bitrate that’s a bit lower than the maximum network speed available and leaves you with plenty of headroom. You might be able to send out a higher-quality HD stream if you're going really close to the network speeds available, but you might find that things change throughout the show, that there's a bit more buffering from the end viewer. Based on statistics and anecdotal evidence from talking to viewers out in the field, streaming end users tend to prefer a lower-quality, but stable and reliable stream over a high-quality, full HD stream that may be buffering every few minutes.