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gmartin777  
#1 Posted : Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:29:41 AM(UTC)
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So, I have bad news. My company decided to go with Livestream Studio, a vMix competitor, over my recommendation. It's a fine system and I've been able to make just about everything work except I'd been hoping to use vMix Call for a longstanding personal project of mine: an interview panel show.

In the past I tried to do this a bit with Skype and it became too complicated with guests not being able to figure it out, connectivity issues, and no mix-minus.

So, my challenge, if you are merciful enough, is to teach me how step-by-step, so I can use an alternative to vMix Call to produce my dream project with 4-5 simultaneous guests in Livestream Studio or a less expensive version of vMix than vMix Pro!

Is there a cloud service that does what vMix Call does? Anyone have links to how to setup with something like Zoom? I really want mix-minus for the guests, so they aren't wearing headphones, but can still hear program audio.

I realize that this will infuriate some of you, but responses to this post should be relevant to pretty much anyone who isn't a vMix Pro user.

Thank you, in advance!

-- B.
zenvideo  
#2 Posted : Thursday, April 13, 2017 3:00:05 AM(UTC)
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gmartin777 wrote:
I really want mix-minus for the guests, so they aren't wearing headphones, but can still hear program audio.

Sending a mix-minus feed doesn't negate the need for remote guests to wear headphones/earbuds, or run speakers at very low level, it simply removes the guest audio from that feed. Unless you have someone doing a master audio mix who's very adept at juggling the audio faders, you could still end up with degraded audio if that mix-minus feed is (partially) picked up by the guest's microphone and added in to the main audio output.
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mjgraves on 4/13/2017(UTC), gmartin777 on 4/16/2017(UTC)
mjgraves  
#3 Posted : Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:05:21 PM(UTC)
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In the past I've done this using both vMix and Wirecast. I believe that Livestream Studio is just a branded version of Wirecast.

I used Jitsi Video Bridge as the remote video connection, although others have used Skype as well. JVB is open source, so you can setup your own instance on a private server or VM, and then have control of the video properties.

I used desktop capture to gather the video from the JVB. I used VoiceMeeter Banana to handle the audio mix-minus arrangements.

Took a bit of head scratching to make it work, but it can work. JVB is a selective forwarding unit (SFU.) It sends the video of the current talker.

At the time I did this vMix didn't support the browser input type. That might be an alternative to using desktop capture, on a suitably capable host.

I eventually found that I had to split the JVB client and vMix onto different hosts to split the workload. Then I used NDI desktop capture bring the call into the production.
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gmartin777 on 4/16/2017(UTC)
SportsNetUSA.net  
#4 Posted : Thursday, April 13, 2017 3:08:44 PM(UTC)
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gmartin777 wrote:
Quote:
Anyone have links to how to setup with something like Zoom?


Tom Sinclair did two video tutorials on Zoom

http://easternshorebroadcasting.com/vmix-tutorials/

I love when management doesn't heed the recommendation of the person that has to use the software on a regular basis.
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gmartin777 on 4/16/2017(UTC)
gmartin777  
#5 Posted : Sunday, April 16, 2017 7:18:34 PM(UTC)
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mjgraves wrote:
In the past I've done this using both vMix and Wirecast. I believe that Livestream Studio is just a branded version of Wirecast.

I used Jitsi Video Bridge as the remote video connection, although others have used Skype as well. JVB is open source, so you can setup your own instance on a private server or VM, and then have control of the video properties.

I used desktop capture to gather the video from the JVB. I used VoiceMeeter Banana to handle the audio mix-minus arrangements.

Took a bit of head scratching to make it work, but it can work. JVB is a selective forwarding unit (SFU.) It sends the video of the current talker.

At the time I did this vMix didn't support the browser input type. That might be an alternative to using desktop capture, on a suitably capable host.

I eventually found that I had to split the JVB client and vMix onto different hosts to split the workload. Then I used NDI desktop capture bring the call into the production.


This is interesting. When you say JVB sends the video of the current talker, does that mean it switches for you? If so, how accurate is the auto-switching?

(BTW, It's not really important, but I'm pretty sure Livestream Studio is not just a branded version of Wirecast. I've tried Wirecast before, as well, and Studio has a very different UI/UX as well as integration with various hardware products and apps from Livestream for remote inputs. It's not at all a bad switcher and I won't complain at all about using it for the big project, but vMix might be an even better product at this point and, well, for my personal interview panel project, vMix is the better product at this point.)

Thanks!
AlanZ  
#6 Posted : Sunday, April 16, 2017 9:13:15 PM(UTC)
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UStream producer was a branded WireCast version, perhaps that's where the confusion comes from. Last time I used it was 5 years ago, so I don't know it's current state.
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gmartin777 on 4/16/2017(UTC)
gmartin777  
#7 Posted : Sunday, April 16, 2017 10:46:47 PM(UTC)
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SportsNetUSA.net wrote:
gmartin777 wrote:
Quote:
Anyone have links to how to setup with something like Zoom?


Tom Sinclair did two video tutorials on Zoom

http://easternshorebroadcasting.com/vmix-tutorials/

I love when management doesn't heed the recommendation of the person that has to use the software on a regular basis.


Thanks, but Sinclair's video only addresses how to setup one guest. Do you need separate PCs for more than one guest? How would you go about adding more than one guest?

Thanks so much! :-)
sinc747  
#8 Posted : Monday, April 17, 2017 3:25:42 AM(UTC)
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In theory you could use multiple WebRTC instances (in Chrome or Firefox) and screen capture them with WC or LS or vMix for that matter. Or use multiple Web Browser inputs in vMix to access a multiple WebRTC instances. Audio routing would be a nightmare, but it could be done.

- Tom

BTW, I posted my Zoom/vMix YouTube videos a week or two before vMix Call came out. Talk about mixed feelings! Of course, vMix Call is much easier to use!
mjgraves  
#9 Posted : Thursday, April 20, 2017 10:40:40 AM(UTC)
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sinc747 wrote:
BTW, I posted my Zoom/vMix YouTube videos a week or two before vMix Call came out. Talk about mixed feelings! Of course, vMix Call is much easier to use!


I know a professor who uses Zoom and vMix to teach classes remotely. The University mandated Zoom, since they use it various applications. The combination can work well.
Amokka  
#10 Posted : Thursday, April 27, 2017 4:54:16 PM(UTC)
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Using Zoom, you can have Zoom show two windows.
These can both be made full screen (i.e. each on a separate monitor).

In each window, you can choose to show everyone, a specific person or the active speaker.
This enables you to set up one monitor with the "panel" and the other monitor auto-switching to the speaker.

If someone starts the Zoom desktop sharing, one of the windows will show that.
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Rivercrest on 6/28/2018(UTC)
clafarge  
#11 Posted : Saturday, September 16, 2017 10:55:25 AM(UTC)
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Sorry to come in so late in the conversation.

I've used Zoom.us screen-capture for events with up to 6 participants.

Zoom.us creates multiple video sources, I believe one for each filmstrip thumbnail as well as the selected full-screen mode (active speaker or gallery). The one I use is the full-screen, active speaker view. They are not marked in intelligent ways, so you'll have to look through each source and identify the one you need.

I've conducted video switching both as automatic using audio levels and also by double-clicking my gallery view (the multi-party filmstrip).

I do crop the screen capture to exclude interface elements, so you do NOT get the full 720p signal that Zoom.us maxes out as on the desktop.

Here's one sample of this format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RJgDyg5Lt4

I hope this is helpful!

Chad
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mgrayeb on 5/29/2019(UTC)
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