Originally Posted by: blopes 
Hello everyone,
I'm currently designing a vMix-based production workflow and would appreciate hearing from users who have real-world experience with solutions that have already been tested and proven reliable in production environments.
I'm specifically looking for recommendations regarding two areas:
1. SDI ↔ NDI workflows
I'm searching for hardware solutions that you've successfully integrated with vMix for both ingest and playout. The ideal setup would allow me to:
- Convert SDI sources to NDI for input into vMix;
- Convert vMix outputs (NDI) back to SDI when required;
- Maintain low latency and stable operation in live production environments.
If you've deployed specific products, I'd be interested in learning about your experience regarding reliability, latency, synchronization, and overall integration with vMix.
2. Dante audio integration with vMix workstations
I'm also evaluating the best approach for integrating Dante audio into a dedicated vMix workstation.
My objective is to enable multichannel audio input and output between vMix and a Dante network. I'm particularly interested in knowing:
- Which Dante interfaces or PCIe cards you have successfully used;
- Whether you're using Dante Virtual Soundcard, Audinate PCIe solutions, Focusrite, Yamaha, DirectOut, or other hardware;
- The number of channels you've been able to achieve reliably;
- Any recommendations regarding driver stability, latency, redundancy, or best practices for mission-critical applications.
If you have a setup that has been "battle-tested" and officially or unofficially validated in your production environment, I would greatly appreciate your feedback and recommendations.
Thank you in advance for sharing your experiences.
1. SDI -> NDIWatch your bandwidth an CPU power!
As a rule of thumb, never load a network more than 75-80% of its capacity. In case of NDI(HQ) - the "classic" NDI this gives you 4 channels max on a gigabit link. We tried to run 6 vMix callers on NDI from one vMix PC to the other and failed badly. If you can, go for 10 Gbit Ethernet. There seems to be an option to run NDI with 2 network cards in a PC and have some sort of load balancing, but I still have to test this. One solution would be to get an Ethernet switch with some 10G ports and use these ports with the vMix PC, while having the other stuff on the 1G ports. However, this is just an idea, I have not tested this yet.
In short: On 1 G network just use 4 NDI HQ streams.
I've seen a setup where 8 cams would stream NDI-HQ to a vMix with 10G Ethernet port just fine. No packet loss, enough headroom on the network link. However 5 cams and above video would stutter. Looking at the CPU load, all things became clear. All CPUs burning at full load. Why? Because the NDI-HQ codec runs on the CPU, it is not offloaded to the graphics card. The cams needed so much internal bandwidth and CPU power that things went wrong. The solution was to set the cams to NDI-HX, which uses H.264 or H.265 as video codec. As a result, you get 30 or 18 Mbit/s per 1080p50 stream instead of 180 on NDI HQ. Also, video decoding is moved to the hardware decoder on the GPU. With this setup, all 8 cams went smoothly and the GPU was happy decoding away.
Tip: If you use the NDI Bridge from the free NDI tool set you can convert NDI-HQ streams to NDI-HX. This still needs CPU power, but you could offload this to an extra PC. However, we have not tested this for a long run or in a live show yt.
Next pitfall: In normal mode, alls NDI streams in vMix are decoded in the same task in software. It's like customers in a bar which all are served in turn. Thats fine as long as they all drink ath the same speed. :-)
If one NDI stream stutters, has dodyg data or otherwise screws up the decoder, all other streams suffer as well.To avoid this, use the checkbox "FEIM" in the NDI input dialog box. This will create a separate task for each NDI input.
Lessons learned:
- Watch network load and CPU load. The Windows task manager is your friend!
- When buying encoders, pick some which can do NDI-HX. Yes, you get a encoding delay, in this case you have to delay SDI input sources in vMix accordingly
- If you can, design things along NDI-HX (h.264) or better NDI-HX3 (H.265).
- Use FEIM.
Encoders: We have a small Birddog Flex Encoder with PoE for NDI-HQ that just works fine. A set of the "more pro metal" 4K encoders were just not usable.
I am happy with a Kiloview E3 (HDMI+SDI Input, each input can serve up to 8 streams, it can convert an old PTZ with SDI and RS422 to an NDI PTZ).
Magewell Encoders get some good price/performance ratings on the web, but I have no personal experience here.
Many PTZ cameras have NDI built in. However in the past they used to have extra licenses for the NDI options. So if you get an older PTZ, check this. Our Sony XG-400 does NDI-HX, not always stable to establish a connection, but once it runs, its fine. Obsbot does some interesting cams, we testet a Tail2. Nice features, operation and setup is a bit confusing, like much of the far east designs. Definitely worth a try.
2. NDI->SDIThe studio monitor from the NDI tools is a good start and a handy emergency solution when in a pinch. Hardware NDI->SDI decoders are tricky. Mostly you get NDI->HDMI. A friend tried to setup its production studio with Birddog decoders, it took long to get it all working after several firmware updates. Personally a had a Birddog Play which I really liked as a system. Small, good price, was supposed to playout NDI and SRT. It just worked on NDI HQ, with NDI-HX it had trouble decoding the video. In the end, the small Android system within run hot and the unit failed. So did two replacement units which were dead on arrival. :-( Hopefully Birddog gets it better on their next hardware release.
I bought a Kiloview D300 Decoder. It can decode several SRT streams and also multiview things and can use HDMI and SDI output at the same time. BUT: When using NDI, it can only decode one stream at the time.
So currently for NDI decoding I would recommend to look at Kiloview and Magewell (no personal experience here). Take your time, test things throughoutly.
It might sound strange, but a 200 € PC with NDI studio monitor on Windows did run 3 days of conference 10 hours/day without a glitch. If you need semirugged mini PCs, check out Shuttle.eu. If you get one with a little bigger processor, you can run 2 studio monitors on two displays as the same time. You can remote control the software via web interface and there is a companion hack plugin as well.
4. Dante AudioAlso a tricky one. Some people seem to run Dante Virtual Souncard (DVS) just fine. Personally I would not trust this, because the PC has to do proper timed audio processing as well as proper timed video at the same time. However, give it a try if you have your video setup running and add a DVS, increasing the channels step by step.
We used a Dante AVIO USB dongle once - this just shows up as USB stereo soundcard in vMix and worked fine.
Generally we use a Motu 1284 on USB 3 as main workhose. It has no Dante, but a full mixer in there, a Web-UI and a Touchpad-UI. I have an extra smaller Motu interface and can connect them with a single Ethernet cable on AVB. It behaves like on big audio interface. This is great to have a remote controllable stagebox/interface away from the vMix.
In your case I would loook into some Dante/USB/Thunderbolt audio interface. This keeps Dante processing out of the PC, the PCs sees just a USB multichannel audio device.
Very important:
What ever you do, built your setup and let it run for hours. We had issues where a small MOTU would loose samples to vMix sometimes after 2 hours, sometimes not. In the end we traced it down to the USB chipset on the motherboard of the PC. I still need to buy that extra USB card to overcome this. These things are so complex, you can get lost in there.
If using USB multichannel audio, diable channels you do not need. That reduces USB load. Also, we had a case where a Streamdeck showing the button camera pictures from vMix would disturb a Fireface USB audio interface. Cam images are updated 5 times per second and produced USB traffic. Switched it off, all ok.
On the vMix PC, keep web browser usage to a minimum. The Motu remote control web page with many nice dancing meters would use too much CPU and GPU power on the second screen, that vMix would drop pictures every now and than. Web browsers are CPU hogs, watch out.
Lots of stuff, I hope this helps and would be happy about feedback or the experience of others.
Good luck,
Christian
