I've recently decided to research migrating my current live streaming configuration from hardware to software, with a bit of a twist.

A little back story. I run a live streaming operation (small scale) that live streams combat sporting event on the regional scale. We do quite a bit of events throughout the year and lugging around equipment is getting tiresome.

We're also looking to expand operations and do events further away. With everything hardware based, that creates challenges.

So what I'm looking to do in the short term is start running a few small events with a remote production workflow. Meaning I run vMix in my home office, doing switching and graphics, and send my camera operators out to capture the event.

Later on we'll start doing this for our full events. I say later because I have a lot of learning and testing to do, and as you'll see in a minute, possibly some computer upgrades to think about.

In the meantime, I'm looking at SRT encoders, and such other hardware investments.

I've already addressed or am in the process of addressing networking and redundancy there. We have redundancy at the venues (LTE backups with hot failover VPN bonding) and we'll be adding redundancy here at the office very soon, so that isn't my worry. Networking is one of the things I'm actually half way decently proficient at.

My concern comes more or less around my older machine. I've got an older gaming desktop laying around here but I'm not sure if it'll fit the bill, if it's too close to call or if I'm insane for even thinking it'll work. I'd like to get an idea, so I can plan and budget.

My two primary concerns are CPU and GPU. Storage (SSD) and memory are easy to upgrade and not costly at all.

Of the two above here is what I have.

Intel Core i5-7600K
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

My concern is around the reference systems. My use case doesn't match any of the reference systems, so I'm not sure if what I've got here is going to under perform or if I'm in a decent spot or which of the two I need to really look at. Not having much expereince in the software video world isn't helping me.

I did manage to install and run vMix for a while today. I actually spent some time in GT Designer having some fun... yes, I said fun.

Video fed from my phone over SRT didn't appear sluggish or show any jitter. There was a fairly high latency setting at 2000 though.

The only thing I noted was a few times (2 or 3 maybe) the interface seems slightly sluggish in vMix. Mainly this was when opening a menu. Any transitions, overlays, or anything else done in the menu worked just fine and was snappy.

Arguably, I could probably use some more memory and the computer could probably use a fresh install as this thing was my primary Linux machine until about 2 weeks ago, so Windows hasn't been used in probably months.

Our requirements aren't too complicated I don't think. Part of the reason we're going software (and remote at that) is to lighten the transport load, but also part of it is to improve our character graphics, which have been pretty ugly up until this point. The final reason is replays.

So the total we're looking to accomplish right now is:

-2 Cameras coming in from full size cameras (SRT over the network ideally)
-1 additional camera that will be on again off again (we'll probably start out using a cell phone with Larix Broadcaster for this) This will be a few minutes at a time for interviews after a fight.
- I'd like to do replays on all 3 cameras as it'll give us the ability to record the interview and play it at a more convenient time, but I can sacrifice it
- Playing a few videos here and there from the local machine
- Graphics
- We're still working out how audio will work (commentators and ring announcer) but we're thinking a capture card with vMix running on a laptop at the venue using vMix call will be the path forward there, not sure yet.

To sum that all up because that turned into a mess
- 3 SRT inputs
- Replays on all 3 cameras (or 2 minimum)
- Playing local video files occasionally
- Graphics with GT Designer
- 1 vMix call for audio ingestion to the remote production "studio"

- 1 RTMP output to our CDN
- 1 NDI (internal office use?)
- Maybe 1 SRT feed back to the venue

This being sports, we stream at 1080p @ 60 fps.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can and sorry this got so long. I sometimes feel more information is better than not enough.

Rob

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay. I must have missed this last night & was out running around today.

So I guess I'll pretend that I'm upset about having to build another computer haha.

Off to do some computer planning.

Quick question though, just for curiosity. Is the limitation here mostly replays or is this hardware just a waste of space for vMix in general.

Thanks

I always want an excuse to build another computer... but I'm also married soooo yea...

I think I'm going to do as you suggested and try and commit to a bunch of testing. I'll probably just use a couple mobile phones from the family and see how it works out with a few SRT feeds into it.

After that I'm thinking I'll add a vMix call in for audio (commentators) and test that to see how well that does.

I'm proceeding slowly and a little bit more methodically. I tend to have the problem of jumping in with both feet before realizing how deep it is. So in this case, it'd be I buy encoders, buy an audio interface, another laptop for vMix call... then realize the computer is crap and the budget just doubled.... I made that mistake with investment into SDI .... should've just gone fiber from the start.

Appreciate the input, as always!

Oh, hey actually one more quick question... I see the reference systems specify a number of NDI inputs but no mention of SRT inputs. Is there a limit beyond the input limit mentioned? Is there a difference in resource consumption between SRT and NDI or SRT/NDI and locally like HDMI/SDI? This is more of a curiosity question because I just don't know.


Thanks again!