Hi Folks

Many of you have probably used NDICam, the unique NDI app for iPhone which delivers great low-latency video to VMix, TriCaster and other NDI compatible devices.

The main challenge with running NDI off iPhone has been the quality of WIFI connection required to sustain high NDI data rates without dropping frames. Whilst some folks have got really solid networks which work great wirelessly, others have struggled to get smooth results at higher data rates.

Well....there is now a great, low cost solution to this problem - a variety of lightning to ethernet adaptors for iPhone and iPad.



Historically, it has been very tricky to wire an iPhone into a wired ethernet network, largely due to power requirements for the ethernet adaptors. However, more recently a new generation of very low power ethernet chips have enabled the creation of lighting to ethernet adaptors which are powered by the iPhone.

We tested one this morning using an iPhone 5S and iPhone 7plus with NDICam. The results were excellent - this appears to have eliminated the wifi bottleneck and connectivity issues, and the performance you end up with depends entirely on the performance of the iPhone.

Foinnex Adaptor - Performance with iPhone NDICam app

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iPhone 7plus - 30fps@1920x1080
iPhone 5S - 30fps@960x540/1280x720 15fps@1920x1080

User reports suggest the iPhone 6 will also give full frame rate at full HD, and of course iPhone 8 and iPhone X should have no problems.

Using an iPhone as an NDI camera provides a unique perspective - either hand held as a close-up camera for desktop demonstrations, or as a point of view camera for natural, discrete coverage of things like backstage events where a camera phone is unobtrusive and does not get the same reaction from subjects as a full sized camera.

NDICam is on sale at the moment for the crazy low price of $9.99 or intl equivalent.
NDICam at the App Store