Global virtual event with NewTek TriCaster and NDI
Australian video production company Damn Good Pictures has recently turned to NewTek and their TriCaster systems with NDI Technology to create their 2021 annual virtual event!
Lucky for Damn Good Pictures, they were already aware of the TriCaster and NDI Technology. So this switch was seamless for them. Because they were streaming in both English and Japanese, they needed something to stream the different languages simultaneously. This event needed people in studio, pre recorded content, live graphics, green screen and chroma keying, and even virtual sets!
Damn Good Productions specializes in corporate meetings having done many live television broadcasts. Thus high production value was key! And this is why they always prided themselves in utilizing new technology to better tell their client's stories.
And with NewTek's vast array of high end production hardware and software, they were perfectly lined up to pull this virtual summit off.
Aye Verckens (Marketing Communications Representative) worked closely with Damn Good Productions. He said, "“When we first approached the team at Damn Good, we had no idea how our first region–wide virtual event would work–and we were thrilled with the end result. Our event was like a television broadcast rather than a virtual meeting. We were impressed with how easy it was to join presenters from the US, Japan, and New Zealand with our hosts in Australia, and we also appreciated how seamless it was to produce simultaneous streams in English and Japanese. Most importantly, the audience was engaged throughout.”
Ben Alcott (Managing Director | Damn Good Productions), complimented this statement with, "“The event was a huge success with participants calling it ‘particularly engaging.’ Due to the complexity of the production components, it simply wouldn’t have been economically possible without NewTek products. This event has opened up production possibilities from Pitney Bowes businesses globally, at a tenth of what they were spending previously.”
How to Integrate Multiple Streams at Once
"NewTek technologies were critical to making the integration of live video and streaming work together seamlessly. The main program presented in English, was anchored by an MC in a green screen studio using TriCaster’s virtual set technology," wrote NewTek's Claudia Kienzle.
Here, people were in other studio which were shot with 3 NewTek PTZ Cameras. All fed into a TriCaster TC1 which - of course - switched and streamed the main event.
Meanwhile, a Japanese program was also being switched using a TriCaster 460 with Advanced Edition software. They used Skype with NDI and Japanese versions of English slides being sent from a MacBook Pro via NDI Scan Converter.
What NDI Studio Monitor Adds!
NewTek offers NDI Tools at ndi.tv. These are free software solutions to help ease and manage NDI workflows and feeds. NDI Studio Monitor is just one of their many benefits.
NDI Studio Monitor helps you see all your feeds coming in over the Network via NDI. This let producers view all the feeds coming in via Skype from both TriCasters and a NewTek Talkshow. They also used it to see each outgoing streams from both Tricaster Units.
Claudio Kiencle writes the following:
Must Haves
To satisfy the client, the live event had to include:
- Audience interaction via chat and polls
- An in–studio host to guide the audience through the program
- Simultaneous English and Japanese language streams, including graphics and audio
- Translations of each stream
- Multiple in–studio presenters along with their slides and pre–produced videos
- Virtual panels with up to 6 channels of remote presenters
- A webcast plenary session
- Virtual “face–to–face” interactive breakout sessions
Some feeds were even brought in via iPhones utilizing the NDI-HX Camera app. This only added to the massive versatility of NDI.
Videoguys devoted an entire month to celebrating NDI via their NDI November Special! Check that out right here to learn more!
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