Livestream Equipment Hire

[IT_JB]

We host an annual conference for all staff across our schools, this year I've been asked to look at live streaming the event for schools further away. Has anyone previously hired this type of equipment for events and does anyone have recommendations on where to hire from?

[Dos_Box]

What kind of layout/format are you looking at? Just the 'boss' on a good camera/mic with everyone else on laptops or desktop webcams or something larger and in a large Teams/Zoom meeting?

[IT_JB]

The conference will be running in person as normal, so keynote speakers to an audience in a large hall. So I probably need slides + camera shot of the speaker + mic input from the stage. We are thinking of doing a YouTube live rather than online meetings.

[bald_pig]

Our school has used PinPoint Media (https://pinpoint-media.global/) for this kind of thing before.

[Dos_Box]

We used StreamYard for our last series of webinars - https://streamyard.com/ - which has a lot of features that facilitate the things you need. Be warned though, you, or someone else, will need to be acting in a producer type role in the background and it does get quite hectic.

Doing something like this does require quite bit of prep and a short dress rehersal would be very advisable.

Oh and we just used our Logitech C920 and it's integrated mic with guests using their own cameras, whether it be an integrated laptop one or desktop type so you don't have to spend a fortune on cameras if you shop around, but I would recommend you don't overcomplicate things.

Oh, and doing a camera and audio test for all participants before going live is a must!

[dhicks]

Has anyone previously hired this type of equipment for events

 

We simply bought a 4-input Blackmagic Atem Mini:

 

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini

 

Around £300, so might be quite affordable instead of hiring. You'll need cameras with clean HDMI outputs, we found our basic Panasonic camcorders to be perfectly fine, although they did need a mini-HDMI output cable. If cable runs are over 5m or so (which they probabluy will be), you'll be wanting to convert HDMI to / from SDI to run over distance, again we bought the Blackmagic converters, around £50 each.

 

You'll need someone sat in front of the controller to switch between camera angles / input devices, and if you want one of those channels to be whatever is on the presenter's laptop you'll want an HDMI splitter of some sort so you can output to the screen and your controller. The controller is seen by a PC / laptop / Mac / Chromebook as a simple USB camera, so should work with pretty much any video conference software you want.

 

If you want to go for the full TV studio effect, you can get wheels to go on the bottom of standard camera tripods, letting you move cameras around as on a TV studio floor, although you'll need to figure out how you handle cables.

[IT_JB]

We simply bought a 4-input Blackmagic Atem Mini:

 

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini

 

Around £300, so might be quite affordable instead of hiring. You'll need cameras with clean HDMI outputs, we found our basic Panasonic camcorders to be perfectly fine, although they did need a mini-HDMI output cable. If cable runs are over 5m or so (which they probabluy will be), you'll be wanting to convert HDMI to / from SDI to run over distance, again we bought the Blackmagic converters, around £50 each.

 

You'll need someone sat in front of the controller to switch between camera angles / input devices, and if you want one of those channels to be whatever is on the presenter's laptop you'll want an HDMI splitter of some sort so you can output to the screen and your controller. The controller is seen by a PC / laptop / Mac / Chromebook as a simple USB camera, so should work with pretty much any video conference software you want.

 

If you want to go for the full TV studio effect, you can get wheels to go on the bottom of standard camera tripods, letting you move cameras around as on a TV studio floor, although you'll need to figure out how you handle cables.

That looks exactly like what I'll need, does the controller then just feed into a PC to be used as a source on something like OBS?

[TronXP]

You can feed it to a computer and it can be seen as a webcam, or you can stream directly to most streaming platforms if the atem is plugged in via ethernet. We do most of ours direct to Youtube using this method.

[dhicks]

does the controller then just feed into a PC to be used as a source on something like OBS?

 

The controller is simply seen as a USB webcam, you should be able to use it in OBS or (in our case) Google Meet or pretty much anything else.

 

You might want to think / plan out how you want to do audio. I think you can simply use the audio from each HDMI input, but if you have a speaker talking you probably want to stick with the same audio input while you're switching around video inputs, although maybe you'd want sound mixed together if you were showing the speaker's laptop and that had someyhing with audio on. You might want to have a lavalier mic on the speaker or something. I think the Atem Mini has at least one or two separate audio inputs, I can't remember - I haven't had much chance to use ours yet.

[slugshead]

+1 for the ATEM kit.

 

They were actually part of my "blended learning" setup in my old school.

 

POV cams in classrooms with different angles, ATEMS (PC HDMI passed through a channel), multiple mic inputs. Dead simple as you've got 4 big red buttons and label them up.

 

But I've also used the ATEM boxes for livestreaming events, two tidy cameras with HDMI out, one wide angle and one zoom.

 

Monitor port of the ATEM connected to a cat5 HDMI splitter, feeding TVs throughout the hall to show the camera feeds.

 

Livestream to youtube via OBS.

 

Mixing desk mainLR mapped to another mirroed output then Aux into streaming computer from OBS too for livestream

[robk]

Another ATEM user here. Works really well.

[Dragnog]

Also +1 for the Atem kit too. Always works a treat for us when recording events in our main Hall.

[SamanthaD]

First - test! Nothing worse than something preventable going wrong on the day.

 

During your test - ensure your lighting states are the same as they will be on the event to check your cameras can cope / auto focus if the lighting is reduced (closed curtains for projection, stage lighting etc)

 

And check to see if they want 2 way comms with your remote locations - adds a whole extra layer of pain....