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fthomas137  
#1 Posted : Sunday, August 27, 2017 1:07:12 PM(UTC)
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Good day all,

I'm personally looking at an inexpensive way to get the fruits of ndi in my small studio without the big expenses. There's a few great but expensive options coming out but hey, I'm sure with the tech that's around, we can figure out a way to d.i.y. it ourselves too.

I've been looking at the raspberry pi board with an hdmi capture attachment but I'm just not too sure if this is the way to go.

Love to hear your input!

Cheers,

Frank
mjgraves  
#2 Posted : Sunday, August 27, 2017 2:23:28 PM(UTC)
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Not sure about Raspberry PI since it's an ARM processor.

Some had tried using Intel NUCs with an HDMI capture card. That can run Windows and the basic edition of vMix. Costs add up. If you have to buy everything new, before you know it you're close to the cost of a BirdDog device.
elvis55  
#3 Posted : Sunday, August 27, 2017 5:52:31 PM(UTC)
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fthomas137  
#4 Posted : Sunday, August 27, 2017 6:39:29 PM(UTC)
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Thanks for that, but man, still $500 usd per unit - ouch.

Frank
mjgraves  
#5 Posted : Monday, August 28, 2017 4:33:12 PM(UTC)
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Speegs  
#6 Posted : Monday, August 28, 2017 7:23:55 PM(UTC)
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The spark appears to be the cost efficient way for the moment. Until NDI Cameras are common (they seem they will be expensive cameras).

You do get wifi on a spark, if you are game to use a wifi uplink. I can see many times where I would use it and many times where I would not. Good for auxiliary cameras, but maybe not your main cameras.

Factor in the price of the capture card you are now NOT buying for that camera. The hassle of maintaining a nuc/computer to do the capture and keeping that reliable (not hard, but still work). The price point of the spark is just at the point where I think it's not worth the hassle to make a home brew NDI capture machine (unless you have a really efficient way of making one).
thanks 1 user thanked Speegs for this useful post.
mjgraves on 8/29/2017(UTC)
mjgraves  
#7 Posted : Tuesday, August 29, 2017 11:32:33 AM(UTC)
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A Raspberry PI based NDI receiver would be a nice trinket. Think of it as a low-latency, high-quality way to deploy a facility wide-stream. The PI already has the necessary hardware, just a matter of software.
fthomas137  
#8 Posted : Tuesday, September 5, 2017 12:37:45 AM(UTC)
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Thanks for the input all. I will continue to add to this thread as I discover more about this.
livepad  
#9 Posted : Wednesday, September 6, 2017 4:23:53 AM(UTC)
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mjgraves wrote:
A Raspberry PI based NDI receiver would be a nice trinket. Think of it as a low-latency, high-quality way to deploy a facility wide-stream. The PI already has the necessary hardware, just a matter of software.


There is currently no ARM decoder for NDI. Hence a Raspberry PI receiver is not feasible.

WayneH  
#10 Posted : Tuesday, September 19, 2017 2:00:56 AM(UTC)
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OBS Studio does have a pretty decent NDI plugin. You could look at re-purposing old hardware + a capture card. Just needs to be x86 based hardware. Linux is supported so Windows Licencing wouldn't be an issue.

We have a few Linux desktops with OBS + NDI we use for desktop capture and our standby music playlist. Works very well. One system has been running for 190 days straight.
fthomas137  
#11 Posted : Tuesday, September 19, 2017 11:39:39 AM(UTC)
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Hey Wayne,

I was looking into OBS and the NDI plugin. The trick is to find well priced capture hardware for hdmi. I actually think that this may be a marvelous solution.

Frank
mjgraves  
#12 Posted : Tuesday, September 19, 2017 1:49:58 PM(UTC)
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fthomas137 wrote:
Hey Wayne,

I was looking into OBS and the NDI plugin. The trick is to find well priced capture hardware for hdmi. I actually think that this may be a marvelous solution.

Frank


El Gato CamLink is just $130. Supports up to 1080p60 over USB 3.0. It's simple UVC, so no driver required.

However, it does not do scaling or frame-rate conversion. If the source is 720p60 that's what's delivered to the host.
Ittaidv  
#13 Posted : Tuesday, September 19, 2017 3:35:57 PM(UTC)
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You could do it with mjpeg too, to have some sort of ip video if you want. There's tons of converters (hdmi/sdi over ethernet) that just convert the signal to mjpeg. It's not as realtime and high quality as NDI, but very affordable.
xaver  
#14 Posted : Tuesday, September 19, 2017 3:59:12 PM(UTC)
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Hi

what's about NDI to HDMI with a raspberry or some other cheap little computer?

someone did it?
WayneH  
#15 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 2:06:10 PM(UTC)
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fthomas137 wrote:
Hey Wayne,

I was looking into OBS and the NDI plugin. The trick is to find well priced capture hardware for hdmi. I actually think that this may be a marvelous solution.

Frank


The Decklink Monitor and Decklink Recorder are well priced. Those are what I would use. I've never had a bad experiance with Decklink cards. And they also have top notch Linux support if that is a factor for you. Either way OBS + NDI will work on all 3 major platforms.
WayneH  
#16 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 2:15:55 PM(UTC)
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xaver wrote:
Hi

what's about NDI to HDMI with a raspberry or some other cheap little computer?

someone did it?


OBS does have a full screen output (preview) option so could be used as a monitor (NDI to HDMI). But other monitor apps do exist for Windows and macOS too.

I don't think there is an ARM version of the Linux SDK yet, which is the main problem with using something like a raspberry PI for a monitor (even if the compute power is good enough). NDI-HX (NDI 3) may change that though.

Not sure what CPU the BirdDog, PTZ cameras, and Spark are using. I'd say they are likely ARM based, but I don't know for sure. But they may only have encoder support for ARM at this time.
fthomas137  
#17 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 2:50:00 PM(UTC)
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Thanks guys for the input. I did find this capture card too, which is uber cheap but a review does say it works with obs.

https://www.amazon.ca/Pi...RID=7CSHD8NNT60J10W9BPZH

Frank
DanMiall  
#18 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 8:08:01 PM(UTC)
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WayneH wrote:
xaver wrote:
Hi

what's about NDI to HDMI with a raspberry or some other cheap little computer?

someone did it?


OBS does have a full screen output (preview) option so could be used as a monitor (NDI to HDMI). But other monitor apps do exist for Windows and macOS too.

I don't think there is an ARM version of the Linux SDK yet, which is the main problem with using something like a raspberry PI for a monitor (even if the compute power is good enough). NDI-HX (NDI 3) may change that though.

Not sure what CPU the BirdDog, PTZ cameras, and Spark are using. I'd say they are likely ARM based, but I don't know for sure. But they may only have encoder support for ARM at this time.


Hi there! I can’t speak for the others as they use a fundamentally different approach to compressing video (NDI HX), but BirdDog uses ‘full bitrate, i-frame NDI’ and this is done in our box via our proprietary FPGA hardware (ie. not a computer running a program, rather a dedicated NDI chip. This makes for ultra low latency and high quality with the lowest possibly power).
fthomas137  
#19 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 8:20:37 PM(UTC)
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DanMiall wrote:

Hi there! I can’t speak for the others as they use a fundamentally different approach to compressing video (NDI HX), but BirdDog uses ‘full bitrate, i-frame NDI’ and this is done in our box via our proprietary FPGA hardware (ie. not a computer running a program, rather a dedicated NDI chip. This makes for ultra low latency and high quality with the lowest possibly power).


That's excellent Dan but $800 per unit is just too rich for folks like myself. I need three, and in Canadian dollars, it like $3,000.

Frank
ask  
#20 Posted : Wednesday, September 20, 2017 8:37:43 PM(UTC)
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fthomas137 wrote:
DanMiall wrote:

Hi there! I can’t speak for the others as they use a fundamentally different approach to compressing video (NDI HX), but BirdDog uses ‘full bitrate, i-frame NDI’ and this is done in our box via our proprietary FPGA hardware (ie. not a computer running a program, rather a dedicated NDI chip. This makes for ultra low latency and high quality with the lowest possibly power).


That's excellent Dan but $800 per unit is just too rich for folks like myself. I need three, and in Canadian dollars, it like $3,000.

Frank


The Price of the NDI studio is really competitive if you look at all the features it provides and it is rock solid! I can understand that you are on a budget, but try getting Sony or Panasonic to reduce the price of their cameras simply because you don't have the $$$. If quality is important to you I can recommended the Birddog unit.
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