You are the best on the Internet UA-cam I have ever seen at this time. I am so impressed by your new van. - I would say that the result are more important than the material of the desk wood. - Design: I would really recommend more labels on the sockets and attachment cables. This is really time saving. Monitoring: Speakers are super important (I have owned the nice cambridge setup :). More important than the microphones or anything else. (I do like the general quality of AKG). For speakers: Please make the jump to Swedish/Norwegian brand. speakers or three steps below speakers Finnish brand. This will give you a real upper hand and answers to any sound questions in seconds without guessing. You will know at an instant what the sound is like to the audience. Where the humming is origin from. This will add quality within the specs and will blow the custumers out! I mean IN! You are the best. If you can focus on right part then your talent will change the branch it self. I am so happy that you take your time to share your knowledge on youtube. I would like to contribute if I may. Please feel free to contact me for any questions or advice.
I completely agree that the finished result coming from the trailer is more important than what it's made of. But with that said, the trailer itself is a marketing tool and it needs to look the part. I wouldn't get hired by many clients if they were to see what the inside looks like right now. Going with a finished hardwood doesn't cost much but really takes the appearance up a few levels. Most of the audio, video, and Ethernet cables are labelled. I haven't put labeling on the jacks because I'm still making changes. I'm still finding that some of my initial ideas for how to wire things aren't necessarily working out the way I had thought. For example, the BNC patch panels are very different now than they were just a couple months ago. I'm waiting for the wiring design to settle before finishing the labeling. For the time being I have Excel spreadsheets I'm using to keep track of what is what, and print those out and tape them to the wall for reference. I plan on getting some Genelec 8010A speakers when I've got the funds to upgrade the audio booth. Hopefully soon.
Audio: XLR grounds by default. When you have 1 device going to/from 2 others you have a suspect connection. 1:1 isolation transformers help. Another trick is to clip the channel 1 wire at one end. I built a bunch of ground lift pass through connectors for my own fixes. I found some gender changers that could take male or female ends. I then wired them as pass throughs, male to female with only pins 2 and 3 hooked up. Also sometimes floating causes more problems than it solves. You get floating capacitance. An RV place should be able to help you with a warm drive in place to park for the duration of the carpet install if you feel the need.
The audio lines I have running from the switcher to the mixer aren't grounded -- I'm only connecting pins 2 and 3, so it's already lifted. But as I've done more research, that isn't where the problem lies -- that audio is actually totally clean. The place I'm having an issue is the audio output of the SDI to HDMI converter I'm using inside of the audio booth. It's got a 60Hz hum on it for some reason. And it's running on battery, not on AC power. Swapping in a BMD SDI to Audio converter in the same place gives me clean audio. There must be something being injected into the circuitry coming back from the HDMI line from the monitor at that location. Fortunately I'm only using that audio for the speakers and the noise isn't going out to Program at all. Program audio is clean.
Always good to see that the manufacturer of a product is interested in how it is being used. Good to hear from you. I'm currently using it with the JustMacros software. Basically the two bottom rows are for Program (red buttons) and Preview (blue buttons). Dedicated buttons for sources 1-10, then a SHIFT key is used to access sources 11-20. Then I combined two adjacent buttons into one for each of the CUT and AUTO buttons on those rows as well. I've got buttons to select the type of transition as well as its duration, start/stop each of the media players, to setup the Upstream and Downstream keys, and then a few macros to handle tasks like automatically bringing a lower third on/off screen after a predetermined amount of time. I haven't done anything very innovative there, at least yet. If I have some spare time later on I'll work on my own software to interface the X-keys to the switcher. JustMacros doesn't quite have the flexibility I want, and the fact that it loves to crash on me in the middle of an event is a real problem. But the X-keys device itself has been great!
Great set up very inspiring. I don't understand why you would send your 2bus through two Behringer preamps instead of using the main out of the Presonus... surely it would sound better without all the extra gear ?
I assume you're referring to the compressor... People are used to their audio levels being pretty consistent, both for music and television. The easiest way to achieve this is with a multi-band compressor. Traditional compressors, as found in digital mixers, simply can't achieve the same kind of result. Audio levels, particularly for live events, tend to be all over the place. Most people, when speaking, will get excited at some point and get much louder than their normal speaking level (or much quieter), or there might be a part of a song that gets much louder than the rest, so controlling levels becomes very difficult. Traditional compressors can really help, but they don't do a great job at keeping the final output level consistent, especially without adding audible artifacts to the audio. Multi-band compressors can be much more aggressive at controlling levels and are much more transparent. The bottom line is that with the Behringer unit my final output audio levels can be much higher than they could be otherwise without worrying about getting too high. And I've yet to see any audio mixer that has a multi-band compressor built in. For a real-world example, go and watch the two live Q&A videos on this channel. The one from this last spring used a traditional compressor (very aggressively, actually). The one from a few weeks ago used a multi-band compressor. The audio level on the second is much healthier. One other note... I know that Behringer doesn't have the most stellar of reputations. (Personally I hate many of their products.) But this Ultra-Dyne Pro was a flagship product that was particularly excellent. It has been found in high-end professional use where many people would have never have even considered any other product from them. It would sound better if I could use digital ins and outs, but both my Presonus mixer and the Yamaha I hope to get don't have any AES/EBU digital I/O.
Ok, didn't realize the console didn't have multiband... makes sense. I agree Behringer do have some products which are simply the right tool for the job.
So I bought a Ultra-Dyne Pro :) I totally agree with everything you said above, i was just curious, the multi band on the Ultra-Dyne Pro is very practical and "replicates" many of the features we use in post audio with iZotope.... appreciate your channel , we so new to this streaming/video game....loving the learning curve.
Doug, love the videos! Would you be interested in making a video about the x-touch with Xair? It is just beyond the price range where I would "just buy it to try it" I have been looking to get one but want to see the feelings from someone with your intense technical standards like mine.
I could certainly do that. But let me know what Behringer's own video ( ua-cam.com/video/pjM2qlulD-4/v-deo.html ) is missing that you'd want me to cover.
The clock is a Masterclock NTDS26, available at the address below. It isn't going to fit your budget, though -- it's $500. A lot cheaper than the others I found, but still kind of expensive. djp.li/clock
Ever, sure. But I don't have any experience with Arduino yet. Something based on Raspberry Pi would be another possible solution as well. There are a lot of web pages describing NTP-based clocks based on Arduino. One would only have to find a larger LED display and adapt the circuitry to drive it. Doesn't seem difficult.
I have one of the busses in my mixer setup with a 3-frame delay. Any audio signal that needs to be delayed is sent to that bus instead of the main stereo bus.
Hi Doug thanks for the update, I think you should consider a mac book for the premier pro playback, I have the same setup at studio and windows laptops couldn't handle the task timely. The other thing, what's your plan for replays did you check out vmix it does 4 cameras
I also have a MacBook Pro, but none of the software I've written runs on Mac so it would be a bit of an odd man out. I looked at vMix but it doesn't meet my needs. I need Ultra HD support with 6 cameras or more.
You should look at #MotionCaster www.motioncaster.com as well its a emergent product and we would like you to influence its development with the specific features you would like to see in a live production and streaming software.
Maybe I lost it but you can put phone calls in the program? I know you mentioned that the small computers were for skype calls but now I'm intrigued for regular phone calls
The computers aren't explicitly for Skype calls but they would certainly work well for that. And with Skype In service you can receive regular phone calls as well.
The main issue is just between the Blackmagic Design SDI-to-HDMI converter and my Presonus mixer (whether going through the patchbay or not). If I substitute in the SDI-to-Audio adapter instead the audio is clean. And I've tried multiple SDI-to-HDMI adapters and cables; the issue is always there. I've also run the audio output directly to my speakers and the noise is still present. I've even tried running the converter on its own battery and I still have the problem. The noise is loud enough that it can be a real problem. I've emailed BMD and they haven't been able to give me any tips to make the noise go away. Fortunately I never send audio destined for final output through that converter so any noise I hear doesn't make it into the final recording/broadcast; it's only in my own speakers. The second, lesser problem is audio output from the Blackmagic Design Studio Converters to my mixer (again, whether going through the patchbay or not). I initially wondered if it was because I am using CAT5 to send that audio, but when I ran XLRs directly it was still a problem. That noise is pretty quiet. When I'm actually doing an event for real it's so quiet that it isn't an actual problem. Bottom line is that I can actually get clean audio out to program. So the issues aren't preventing me from being able to produce an event properly. More of an inconvenience.
I tried CasparCG for a while and ultimately gave up on it because it doesn't handle files that don't already match the final frame rate or resolution very well. It was my experience with it that caused me to look for another solution.
we experienced this as well ... in our use case this is not important cause we use "the same" files for many productions. what i really like is the html5 consumer in caspar ... beeing a webdeveloper most of my live is very cool to programm gfx in the same way you make websites and not to "chromakey" them out but to have real key and fill ... ua-cam.com/video/zRYF2XRK2Cw/v-deo.html
David Vilter one situation I find us running into frequently is a client handing me a flash drive minutes before an event, wanting us to play a video. At a recent sporting event I was given more than a dozen ads to play and there was no consistency to resolution, coded, or frame rate. So the flexibility of using Premiere really has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.. I’m not opposed to using CasparCG, and I fully understand the importance of alpha key transparency, but I find that those are things that I don’t need very often. If they could address the conversion problem I could quite happily use the product.
i totaly know the situation your in ;-) in our market there is not "the one best solution" there is only the solutions that fit the situation your needs and matches your pocket money. if you can make it work for you in your workflow its absolut the best ... i love your videos for showing your solutions even if i do my work in an other way. it always opens my eyes for endless routes an possibilities to finally archive the ultimate goal ... a good (semi stress free) produktion ;-)
Doug, I just watched the recording of the Q and A and I know you have trouble with the macro software. Have you heard of AutoHotKey? There's this guy from LinusTechTips (a video editor) who has created complex custom macros all open source for Xkeys, Elgato Streamdeck, and his own custom keyboard. Maybe you'd find it useful. ua-cam.com/video/y3e_ri-vOIo/v-deo.html
While interesting, it doesn't seem as though any of those are geared toward the ATEM switcher, which is the one piece that is most difficult to find. This solution also seems geared toward non-developer types (people capable of writing scripts, but not full-on developers). Since I have a software development background, and the X-Keys and ATEM SDKs are free, my current plan is to create my own solution when I get some other projects (like my trailer) wrapped up. That way I have a lot more options and customizability than any of these other solutions can possibly offer. Hopefully I'll also be able to make that solution available for others as well.
I wounder...would the SDK allow for the switching of the M/E rows on the ATEM 2M/E broadcast panel? I am trying to figure out a way to put the M/E 2 on the bottom and M/E 1 on the top since our setup requires us to work mainly in the second M/E,
Since you don't install your own software on the BMD broadcast panels I'm not sure how you could reconfigure this without Blackmagic Design's help. Contact their Tech Support group to see if there's something then can do to help.
You are the best on the Internet UA-cam I have ever seen at this time. I am so impressed by your new van.
- I would say that the result are more important than the material of the desk wood.
- Design: I would really recommend more labels on the sockets and attachment cables. This is really time saving.
Monitoring: Speakers are super important (I have owned the nice cambridge setup :). More important than the microphones or anything else. (I do like the general quality of AKG). For speakers: Please make the jump to Swedish/Norwegian brand.
speakers or three steps below speakers Finnish brand. This will give you a real upper hand and answers to any sound questions in seconds without guessing. You will know at an instant what the sound is like to the audience. Where the humming is origin from. This will add quality within the specs and will blow the custumers out! I mean IN!
You are the best. If you can focus on right part then your talent will change the branch it self. I am so happy that you take your time to share your knowledge on youtube.
I would like to contribute if I may. Please feel free to contact me for any questions or advice.
I completely agree that the finished result coming from the trailer is more important than what it's made of. But with that said, the trailer itself is a marketing tool and it needs to look the part. I wouldn't get hired by many clients if they were to see what the inside looks like right now. Going with a finished hardwood doesn't cost much but really takes the appearance up a few levels.
Most of the audio, video, and Ethernet cables are labelled. I haven't put labeling on the jacks because I'm still making changes. I'm still finding that some of my initial ideas for how to wire things aren't necessarily working out the way I had thought. For example, the BNC patch panels are very different now than they were just a couple months ago. I'm waiting for the wiring design to settle before finishing the labeling. For the time being I have Excel spreadsheets I'm using to keep track of what is what, and print those out and tape them to the wall for reference.
I plan on getting some Genelec 8010A speakers when I've got the funds to upgrade the audio booth. Hopefully soon.
Audio: XLR grounds by default. When you have 1 device going to/from 2 others you have a suspect connection. 1:1 isolation transformers help. Another trick is to clip the channel 1 wire at one end. I built a bunch of ground lift pass through connectors for my own fixes. I found some gender changers that could take male or female ends. I then wired them as pass throughs, male to female with only pins 2 and 3 hooked up. Also sometimes floating causes more problems than it solves. You get floating capacitance.
An RV place should be able to help you with a warm drive in place to park for the duration of the carpet install if you feel the need.
The audio lines I have running from the switcher to the mixer aren't grounded -- I'm only connecting pins 2 and 3, so it's already lifted. But as I've done more research, that isn't where the problem lies -- that audio is actually totally clean.
The place I'm having an issue is the audio output of the SDI to HDMI converter I'm using inside of the audio booth. It's got a 60Hz hum on it for some reason. And it's running on battery, not on AC power. Swapping in a BMD SDI to Audio converter in the same place gives me clean audio. There must be something being injected into the circuitry coming back from the HDMI line from the monitor at that location. Fortunately I'm only using that audio for the speakers and the noise isn't going out to Program at all. Program audio is clean.
Great build. We'd like to know more about your X-keys layout, Doug.
Always good to see that the manufacturer of a product is interested in how it is being used. Good to hear from you.
I'm currently using it with the JustMacros software. Basically the two bottom rows are for Program (red buttons) and Preview (blue buttons). Dedicated buttons for sources 1-10, then a SHIFT key is used to access sources 11-20. Then I combined two adjacent buttons into one for each of the CUT and AUTO buttons on those rows as well.
I've got buttons to select the type of transition as well as its duration, start/stop each of the media players, to setup the Upstream and Downstream keys, and then a few macros to handle tasks like automatically bringing a lower third on/off screen after a predetermined amount of time.
I haven't done anything very innovative there, at least yet. If I have some spare time later on I'll work on my own software to interface the X-keys to the switcher. JustMacros doesn't quite have the flexibility I want, and the fact that it loves to crash on me in the middle of an event is a real problem. But the X-keys device itself has been great!
Great set up very inspiring.
I don't understand why you would send your 2bus through two Behringer preamps instead of using the main out of the Presonus... surely it would sound better without all the extra gear ?
I assume you're referring to the compressor...
People are used to their audio levels being pretty consistent, both for music and television. The easiest way to achieve this is with a multi-band compressor. Traditional compressors, as found in digital mixers, simply can't achieve the same kind of result.
Audio levels, particularly for live events, tend to be all over the place. Most people, when speaking, will get excited at some point and get much louder than their normal speaking level (or much quieter), or there might be a part of a song that gets much louder than the rest, so controlling levels becomes very difficult. Traditional compressors can really help, but they don't do a great job at keeping the final output level consistent, especially without adding audible artifacts to the audio. Multi-band compressors can be much more aggressive at controlling levels and are much more transparent.
The bottom line is that with the Behringer unit my final output audio levels can be much higher than they could be otherwise without worrying about getting too high. And I've yet to see any audio mixer that has a multi-band compressor built in.
For a real-world example, go and watch the two live Q&A videos on this channel. The one from this last spring used a traditional compressor (very aggressively, actually). The one from a few weeks ago used a multi-band compressor. The audio level on the second is much healthier.
One other note... I know that Behringer doesn't have the most stellar of reputations. (Personally I hate many of their products.) But this Ultra-Dyne Pro was a flagship product that was particularly excellent. It has been found in high-end professional use where many people would have never have even considered any other product from them. It would sound better if I could use digital ins and outs, but both my Presonus mixer and the Yamaha I hope to get don't have any AES/EBU digital I/O.
Ok, didn't realize the console didn't have multiband... makes sense. I agree Behringer do have some products which are simply the right tool for the job.
So I bought a Ultra-Dyne Pro :)
I totally agree with everything you said above, i was just curious, the multi band on the Ultra-Dyne Pro is very practical and "replicates" many of the features we use in post audio with iZotope.... appreciate your channel , we so new to this streaming/video game....loving the learning curve.
have a look at CasparCG
I've used it quite a few times. :)
Doug, love the videos!
Would you be interested in making a video about the x-touch with Xair? It is just beyond the price range where I would "just buy it to try it"
I have been looking to get one but want to see the feelings from someone with your intense technical standards like mine.
I could certainly do that. But let me know what Behringer's own video ( ua-cam.com/video/pjM2qlulD-4/v-deo.html ) is missing that you'd want me to cover.
Nice stuff man, this is great.do you have a link to that clock? Looking for something under $200 for my church livestream production room. Thanks!
The clock is a Masterclock NTDS26, available at the address below. It isn't going to fit your budget, though -- it's $500. A lot cheaper than the others I found, but still kind of expensive.
djp.li/clock
Thanks a lot, would u ever do an arduino based clock or recommend it for needs like mine?
Ever, sure. But I don't have any experience with Arduino yet. Something based on Raspberry Pi would be another possible solution as well.
There are a lot of web pages describing NTP-based clocks based on Arduino. One would only have to find a larger LED display and adapt the circuitry to drive it. Doesn't seem difficult.
How do you handle audio delay? (when video is a few frames late)
I have one of the busses in my mixer setup with a 3-frame delay. Any audio signal that needs to be delayed is sent to that bus instead of the main stereo bus.
Hi Doug thanks for the update, I think you should consider a mac book for the premier pro playback, I have the same setup at studio and windows laptops couldn't handle the task timely.
The other thing, what's your plan for replays did you check out vmix it does 4 cameras
I also have a MacBook Pro, but none of the software I've written runs on Mac so it would be a bit of an odd man out.
I looked at vMix but it doesn't meet my needs. I need Ultra HD support with 6 cameras or more.
You should look at #MotionCaster www.motioncaster.com as well its a emergent product and we would like you to influence its development with the specific features you would like to see in a live production and streaming software.
It looks like an interesting product, but it doesn't seem to fit with my needs.
I sent an email djmail. I am interested in knowing some of your needs.
I'm not seeing it. Please use the Contact Us page on the website: djp.li/contact.
Looking great. Where did you get those Cable Protectors at?
Right here: amzn.to/2AKFBt1
Maybe I lost it but you can put phone calls in the program? I know you mentioned that the small computers were for skype calls but now I'm intrigued for regular phone calls
The computers aren't explicitly for Skype calls but they would certainly work well for that. And with Skype In service you can receive regular phone calls as well.
What is your exact signal chain related to the noise issue?
The main issue is just between the Blackmagic Design SDI-to-HDMI converter and my Presonus mixer (whether going through the patchbay or not). If I substitute in the SDI-to-Audio adapter instead the audio is clean. And I've tried multiple SDI-to-HDMI adapters and cables; the issue is always there. I've also run the audio output directly to my speakers and the noise is still present. I've even tried running the converter on its own battery and I still have the problem. The noise is loud enough that it can be a real problem. I've emailed BMD and they haven't been able to give me any tips to make the noise go away. Fortunately I never send audio destined for final output through that converter so any noise I hear doesn't make it into the final recording/broadcast; it's only in my own speakers.
The second, lesser problem is audio output from the Blackmagic Design Studio Converters to my mixer (again, whether going through the patchbay or not). I initially wondered if it was because I am using CAT5 to send that audio, but when I ran XLRs directly it was still a problem. That noise is pretty quiet. When I'm actually doing an event for real it's so quiet that it isn't an actual problem.
Bottom line is that I can actually get clean audio out to program. So the issues aren't preventing me from being able to produce an event properly. More of an inconvenience.
Awesome work!!! This is so inspiring!!!
Thanks! It's a lot of fun to work on too, and it's also a great feeling to achieve a life-long goal.
We use casparCG for GFX and Playout and vmix for recording an our server
I tried CasparCG for a while and ultimately gave up on it because it doesn't handle files that don't already match the final frame rate or resolution very well. It was my experience with it that caused me to look for another solution.
we experienced this as well ... in our use case this is not important cause we use "the same" files for many productions. what i really like is the html5 consumer in caspar ... beeing a webdeveloper most of my live is very cool to programm gfx in the same way you make websites and not to "chromakey" them out but to have real key and fill ... ua-cam.com/video/zRYF2XRK2Cw/v-deo.html
David Vilter one situation I find us running into frequently is a client handing me a flash drive minutes before an event, wanting us to play a video. At a recent sporting event I was given more than a dozen ads to play and there was no consistency to resolution, coded, or frame rate. So the flexibility of using Premiere really has saved my bacon on more than one occasion..
I’m not opposed to using CasparCG, and I fully understand the importance of alpha key transparency, but I find that those are things that I don’t need very often. If they could address the conversion problem I could quite happily use the product.
i totaly know the situation your in ;-) in our market there is not "the one best solution" there is only the solutions that fit the situation your needs and matches your pocket money. if you can make it work for you in your workflow its absolut the best ... i love your videos for showing your solutions even if i do my work in an other way. it always opens my eyes for endless routes an possibilities to finally archive the ultimate goal ... a good (semi stress free) produktion ;-)
For playback I found Premiere is not reliable enough and I used PlaybackPro for that but now switching to Qlab and Mitti.
Doug, I just watched the recording of the Q and A and I know you have trouble with the macro software. Have you heard of AutoHotKey? There's this guy from LinusTechTips (a video editor) who has created complex custom macros all open source for Xkeys, Elgato Streamdeck, and his own custom keyboard. Maybe you'd find it useful. ua-cam.com/video/y3e_ri-vOIo/v-deo.html
While interesting, it doesn't seem as though any of those are geared toward the ATEM switcher, which is the one piece that is most difficult to find. This solution also seems geared toward non-developer types (people capable of writing scripts, but not full-on developers).
Since I have a software development background, and the X-Keys and ATEM SDKs are free, my current plan is to create my own solution when I get some other projects (like my trailer) wrapped up. That way I have a lot more options and customizability than any of these other solutions can possibly offer. Hopefully I'll also be able to make that solution available for others as well.
I wounder...would the SDK allow for the switching of the M/E rows on the ATEM 2M/E broadcast panel? I am trying to figure out a way to put the M/E 2 on the bottom and M/E 1 on the top since our setup requires us to work mainly in the second M/E,
Since you don't install your own software on the BMD broadcast panels I'm not sure how you could reconfigure this without Blackmagic Design's help.
Contact their Tech Support group to see if there's something then can do to help.