Also, will there be HDMI->NDI converter boxes similar to the HDMI->SDI converter boxes that exists today?

Love this open NDI question thread.

Will NDI work over a wireless network. I know that it is intended for a Gigabit network, just curios if it would work wireless.

- Tom

It is designed to work over any IP network, but as Martin pointed out in the Live Show Q&A wireless speeds are variable, and so you may not be able to sustain a high bandwidth and stable signal all the time, and may top out at 400ish mps if you are lucky. Wired connectivity gives you the full 1 gig to play with. But I can think of a number of solutions that should help with this. I am really keen to get my hands on a working NDI based system and start testing different scenarios.

More on NDI here: https://player.vimeo.com/video/137855231

Quote from Newtek press release(Sept 2015):"NewTek worked closely with a large number of top manufacturers and developers to allow IP connectivity between devices. NDI’s backwards compatibility means that along with NewTek products and systems from Brainstorm, CasparCG, CharacterWorks, ChyronHego, ClassX, Compix, EasyWorship, Gnural Net, Graphics Outfitters, LiveXpert, Media 5, PlayBox Technology, Teradek, Vizrt, Wasp3D and many more will be NDI-enabled on the day of launch. NewTek has also collaborated with AJA, DELTACAST and Matrox to enable their capture cards to act as NDI senders or receivers; support for Blackmagic Design cards will also be provided. Boland, JVC, LiveU, NewsMaker, Panasonic, PESA, Sienna and Wowza are also working on providing NDI-based solutions."

Kelvin....great suggestion, for Newtek! Or one of its iOS/Adroid partners......

Another NDI discussion: and some context here: http://www.tvtechnology....e-ip-with-caution/277629

Some answers to some common questions below:

Is it GPU or CPU based?
NDI encoding/decoding is CPU based using around 5% per 1080p30 camera on a modern i7 CPU.

What color spaces are supported?
Frames are sent/received from NDI at 4:2:2 8 bit, but NDI compresses at 16 bit internally.
NDI also has full support for alpha, sent as a separate channel. (so 4:2:2:4)

Will there be converter boxes?
More than likely, possibly from more than one manufacturer.
We are working on our own prototypes using off the shelf SFF (small form factor) PCs, but
the codec can theoretically be used on devices as small as a standard HDMI to SDI mini converter.

The main advantage of one of these converters is you will no longer need a capture card
opening up most laptops to multi camera productions without the need for thunderbolt!

My hope is the converters will be affordable.

What is the stream bitrate?

To my knowledge it is variable bit rate.
I've seen around 50Mbps to 100Mbps per camera in my tests so far.

Will there be iOS and Android support?

Support for these devices, specifically the ARM processor is being worked on at NewTek.
Not sure if they will release software for these devices, but then NDI is open so if you are a developer
sign up for the SDK and start building your own!

Will Desktop Capture use NDI?

Yes, we plan to completely replace vMix Desktop Capture to use NDI.
NewTek will also release an app that does much the same thing.

What vMix licenses will we need?
One vMix license per PC that is running vMix at the same time.
If you use a 3rd party NDI app on a second PC or vMix Desktop Capture, you won't need the second license.

Do I need two copies of vMix to use capture cards from multiple PCs?

No. One of the cool things NewTek is working on is a universal PC app that can convert
any capture cards in the PC it is running from into NDI.

So you could have a vMix laptop in your studio and a rackmount PC with all the capture gear
locked away!

Martin,

Thank you and your staff for all the work on incorporating NDI to vMix. It opens up so many possibilities.

I'm not surprised that NDI doesn't tap the GPU specifically. Newtek's SDK can't assume that there's a specific sort of GPU capability available. The SDK is applicable to a variety of platforms.

I would imagine that someone incorporating NDI into an application that will be the primary load on a particular host could do their own optimization. That would be outside the realm of the SDK.

If Newtek are offering up an app to add NDI to common capture card we can hope that they will leverage whatever acceleration is available on those cards.

GeorgeR. If my guess is right, DesktopCapture will remain pretty much the same as is, however the transport method will change to using NDI. Essentially the Desktop capture will become a source in the NDI selection screen.

Further, one of the features that NDI has natively is to serve any onscreen application as an NDI source. In my testing this works flawlessly and I cannot see any latency at all. Update: No discernible latency on the same PC. Also the same on a LAN. :-) So I am typing this on one machine but monitoring the output on a overhead projector connected to a PC across the room! I hope that NewTek is also talking to Cisco and Polycom etc!!!!

For those who are going to ask about Macs, NDI also provides support for Linux and OSX at this stage.....

This is going to open up and new can of worms. :-)

Now I want 16 channels of audio in and out of vMix.
Greedy aren't I ? :-)

We use 8 channels+ in our facility now and it has kept vMix out of the loop for some of our uses. This could be VERY useful for us.

We use Dante to route audio also, and having 16 channels would be fantastic !!!


Steve