Hi team, on Saturday night I did the first live stream using vMix and the app UTC for GFX/clocks/switching, and I was largely pleased! About 70% of things went to plan.

Youtube Link

Yes, most of it is mute. This was a major problem. I found with everything else going on (Trying to keep track of clocks, gfx and the score) by myself, it simply slipped my mind to check that this was working properly. I'm fairly sure I had the headphone output of the master bus heading into my comms headphones, but perhaps it wasn't the master output, as I heard the music and arena noise, but it appears it wasn't going to the stream/recording at times. Guess I have to pay that more attention next time.

So, things I took away from the event is this:

1. You can't do everything yourself. Get some help, perhaps run UTC on a separate machine and concentrate on the switcher. Especially with fast sports like this, even though it was veterans recreational hockey.
2. I streamed at 10Mbps 1080p 50fps, using two cameras, a Sony FS7 and F5. Looks amazing. (But, first part of the first game, the FS7 was in 50fps, but 25fps shutter. Not a good look, but we finally worked it out)
3. Have a backup method of upload. At one point, the EE modem I was using dropped, and my Three Mobile backup wasn't working either. Then, phone crashed so couldn't even hotspot. At least the recording kept going.
4. Be careful with your UTC setup. Changing one item can have knock-on effects to gfx that are on screen at that moment. If something is online, don't change anything that might impact it.
5. Allow even more time than you think you need to setup. We started setup 2.5 hour prior to the first faceoff, and we still only just made it, due to a broken HDMI Mini converter, when we couldn't work out why it wouldn't connect. Didn't leave time to check shutter speeds, audio or anything else.

Otherwise, I was really happy with the look, and the quality of the stream at 1080 50p was amazing. Here is the setup I used:

Three cameras - PMW-F5 on wide, FS7 on tight and GoPro black as a static
- SDI connections into a Blackmagic Decklink Duo, HDMI into a Blackmagic 4k Extreme (Mistaken purchase, way overkill for what we use it for)
- Comms went through a USB headset into the PC, then routed to my basic soundcard output via VoiceMeeter Banana (Free software, and VERY useful) directly to the operators over XLR.
- PC itself was:
Intel i7-6700K 4GHz CPU
Gigabyte - GA-Z170X-UD5 TH ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Corsair - Vengeance Pro 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory
Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 970 4GB G1 Gaming Video Card
Corsair - 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Corsair - H115i 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler

I built this for home gaming, but by adding the Blackmagic gear, I'm taking it on the road for streaming. With these components, I never saw any fps dip whatsoever, when it was streaming 1080p 50 at 10Mbps, and recording 25Mbps into MP4 in five minute chunks.

While I'm disappointed in some aspects that went wrong, overall I am really happy, having come over from Wirecast which collapsed on me at a vital moment last year. This was my first attempt, and since it was done for the love of it, rather than anyone funding it, thankfully there are no repercussions from the faults. They were just happy to see it live.

So thanks to all on this forum, especially in the UTC software threads. All those tutorials were very useful. Looking forward to the next one.

The tutorial man himself! Thanks for everything DWAM. I have to admit, I think it was seeing how you could manipulate gfx with various data sources in UTC that made me pull the trigger on getting vMix during the trial.

You're absolutely right, I'll do the right thing later this evening.

As for the score bug, I swear I lined it up on the safe text marker, but perhaps I'll shift it to the safe action instead.

Thanks again for all the assistance.

Nick