How to Put Together a Cost-Effective Portable Streaming Kit (UPDATED)

On-Camera Streaming Devices

When you go to stream on location, the most common problem is finding out that you have no bandwidth. In one such case I was doing an 8-camera shoot at an interactive fashion show at the famous Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills. An emerging fashion brand contacted me and said, “Look, we want to have 8 streams going on, and we want you there.” So I went to get a site survey, and found out they only had 460Kbps upstream, and they said, “Well, we’ve already planned everything, and obviously you’re the last guy to call, and the last minute, but we want to do this production, and we've got to stream it out.”

I was put in a situation where I had to come up with a solution, and the Teradek Cube ($1,690-$1,990, shown in Figure 12, below), a compact, on-camera encoder that connects via HD-SDI, provides high-profile H.264 compression, and supports resolutions up to 1080p over 2.4/5Ghz WiFi, Ethernet, and 3G/4G/LTE cellular networks via a USB modem, proved a lifesaver. I used it with the Teradek Bond ($3,990), a 4G LTE cellular bonding solution that enabled me to put five or six cards together and get some pretty good upstream bandwidth. Fortunately, we were able to get by on anywhere from 6-10Mbps for the 8 streams, and the streams came off flawlessly, everybody was happy, and the production went pretty much without a hitch.

Figure 12. Teradek Cube.

So when you’re in a limited-bandwidth situation--and it happens quite a bit, because hotels that you think would have fantastic bandwidth often offer little or none, or what they do have is shared with so many guests that there’s little left over to support a consistent stream--it’s nice to know that there are solutions like the Teradek Cube that can get you out of a jam. Cube notwithstanding, you need to know what kind of bandwidth you’ll be working with before you show up to shoot. When you book an event, I recommend doing a site survey at least 1-2 weeks in advance, and if you have any type of Wi-Fi cards or 4G cards, bring them and do a speed test to see if you have enough bandwidth. It will save you a lot of headaches.

I encountered a similar problem when I received a call from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (which does the Walk of Fame in Hollywood). The chamber wanted me to stream them inducting Slash from Guns ’n’ Roses to the Walk of Fame, with an introduction from Charlie Sheen. They wanted me to streaming the event for them in a very small location, a staging area where each member of the media was given just enough room for a camera and a tripod. Any additional gear I bought for streaming also had to fit into that space.

Knowing in advance how little space I'd have to work with, I brought a compact camera, the Canon XF105, a monopod, and a Teradek Cubes mounted on top with a monopod, and I crowded into this space, elbow to elbow with all the press from all over the world. This setup proved very effective in allowing me to deliver a stream despite limited space, limited bandwidth, and on a limited budget as well.

The Teradek VidiU ($699) is a more consumer-type solution with HDMI inputs. It provides most of the same capabilities as the Cube, except that it’s geared towards small organizations and nonprofessionals who want to be able to put a streaming device on top of their camera and then shoot and stream away.

Recoding a High-Quality Feed

Another interesting new solution for portable, budget-conscious live production when you need maximum functionality in a minimum footprint is the Matrox Monarch HD (Figure 13, below), an HDMI-connected unit that allows you to record and stream simultaneously. This gives you the safety of having an archive of what you’re actually streaming. This is something that I intend to have in my kit as just a backup in the event that I’m in a location or a situation where I need an additional encoder for under $1,000. I’ve asked Matrox about HD-SDI inputs for the Monarch HD but they’re not available yet.

Figure 13. Matrox Monarch HD.

In addition to outfitting your kit with cameras and switchers and so forth, you always want to have archive of what you recorded, and there are portable devices that allow you to take either HDMI inputs or SDI inputs and record them onto an SSD or a hard drive, in a high-quality, low-compression format such as Quicktime ProRes 422. Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Shuttle and Atomos Samurai are two versatile devices that allow you to record 10-bit files in DNxHD and all the varying degrees of ProRes, including ProRes 422, HQ, and LT. The other great thing about the Atomos Samurais is that they have monitors on which you can actually watch what you’re recording and monitor the sound as well.

Streamlining Your Streaming Kit

How you assemble your portable streaming kit, and which components you choose and use, depend largely on your needs and what your clients want. You may even find yourself developing different kits for different types of jobs as you diversify your offerings and find yourself working in a wider variety of streaming scenarios.

I believe that ultra-portable systems and other fluid, carry-on-compact kits are the future of streaming production because they enable you to literally produce professional live shows on the go. My goal is to be able to go on location and produce a multicamera show using the cameras that I described earlier and switch it live, with as few as one or two camera ops/production crew.

Finally, if you’re looking for an all-inclusive portable streaming solution, I’d highly recommend considering something from a reseller, because you know they’ve spent a lot of time testing the equipment, and you don’t have to worry about substandard components. The cost is a bit more than what you would pay if you built your own system, but it’ll pay for itself and save you from a lot of headaches in the long run.

Note: This article is based on a conference session presented at Streaming Media Producer Live on November 19, 2013, and was updated with substantial new material for an April 2014 Streaming Media article.