Participant

Question

Unable to find relevant answer...can PP or other be used as a LIVE camera switcher?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
February 28, 2017
4 replies
2453 views

Obviously PP can edit multi camera shots, but I am wondering if one of the Adobe programs can be used (even with an adaptation) as a live camera switcher, where the "main" screen is what is recorded? Every search I do only comes up with pre-recorded video uploading. I am needing a relatively inexpensive and user friendly switcher for 3 cameras, possibly 4. I imagine a condenser or something would be needed to have the lines in. Your help is appreciated.

Thank you!

CiCi

[email address removed by moderator]

This topic has been closed for replies.

Warren Heaton10841144

Community Expert

So... no, PR cannot be used as a live video camera switcher.

However, a professional video switcher can be!

B&H has a pretty good selection at very competitive prices: B&H Photo Video

Report back on what you go with.

gerikp

Community Expert

Giving this a second thought. You wouldn't be able to show live video. But perhaps if you had a multicam sequence and you added a second monitor and used Playback Preferences to show your Program monitor on your second screen. And if your second screen had an HDMI loop through you could maybe take the HDMI output from that second monitor and feed it to your destination. Whether that be a live streaming service or something. But that won't solve the problem that Premiere Pro can't pass through live video.

CiCiChambersAuthor

Participant

I am not wanting to STREAM out , I just want to mix while the camera is rolling and send to a recording device.

shooternz

Legend

By mix... I assume you mean you need to do transitions and cuts between all cameras.

The analog switchers I was familiar with had many transitions and wipes and also had feeds so each camera was recorded separately as well as the "program,"

All fairly complicated electronically because camera all had to be gen synched , signal balanced and of course...manage audio as well etc.

I am not sure what is available for video in DIGITAL switchers.. but I do know my Digital Audio Mixer despite being fairly budget level...is still a relatively sophisticated bit of gear.

I doubt you will find a low budget fix for your requirement but good luck.

BTW - there are sites that have second hand film and broadcast equipment.

gerikp

Community Expert

Hey CiCi,

Just to piggyback off what was already said I wanted to toss out a solution. You might want to check out a product called "Wirecast" made by Telestream. Depending on your hardware it might work for what you need. Although I think it would be really great if Adobe made a live switching software package.

CiCiChambersAuthor

Participant

Wirecast is for phones, not cameras. And we aren't webcasting. Sure, that is great to be able to do, but I am actually producing actual shows for an actual broadcast and want to mix without taking out a loan. If Wirecast is out there, then I know that there is something that can be done similarly with real cameras.

Thanks again.

The information I have found "googling" is below. Honestly,why people who design this stuff can make apps like i-movie and Switcher can't make something easy, portable and small is beyond me. A small external box with a compressor, vidcard and virtual memory with a few second delay and a cat-5 to HDMI or USB interface can't be that freaking hard. Only one screen needs to record, the rest can be running live without recording. we do picture in picture on our phones...this can't be that much more difficult for a tech developer. That's all I want. Is a shark with a freaking laser-beam attached to its head.

I am wanting to know if adobe can line in cameras, or an inexpensive program that can:

1) That can be loaded on multiple systems

2) Has at least three cameras in

3) Has other input ability such as graphics

4) Can do bottom thirds on the fly

5) Can do inset graphics and instant chromakey

6) Is portable somewhat

7) has live camera switching

8) at least some audio adjustment

9) Output to drive

10) Webcasting is secondary. I am more worried about switching easily than i am about something going live on facebook. We can ALWAYS load to facebook, or any app, after live edit.

11) Affordable.

12) Ease of use with intelligent design. It makes NO sense to buy it, if it takes an engineering degree to use it. we need to be able to read a manual, and teach ourselves how to use it without going full John Wilkes Booth on someone.

13) That we can wire in from the three studios and save valuable editing time with live swtiching between two or three or more cameras.

14) A touch interface would be great. Able to operate on a tablet. Only two programs allow that, and of the two one (Swtcher) is an app that uses iPhones feeding to a Tablet. The other requires a full system and hardware, and a remote interface can be added on an android tablet.

15) Isn't designed by someone who isn't familiar with real time recording.

Program	Site	Cost	Number of Cameras	Stream Out?
vMix This looks good. But someone with a lot more knowledge would need to look at. NONE of these sites are arranged logically. A simple: If you want to ____ then you need ____ software and _____hardware; in a simple list.	http://www.vmix.com/ Content Webcams, Videos, Images, Powerpoint, IP Cameras, Streams, DVDs, Streams, Desktop Capture Professional HD production on a modest PC vMix is the most efficient live production software on the market thanks to full 3D acceleration. Create productions with multiple HD sources without breaking the bank or your CPU. HD Virtual Sets with high quality real-time Chroma Key Built In Virtual Sets - Or build your own Full Motion Zoom - Customisable camera position presets High Quality Chroma Key - Use with or without virtual sets to suit your production needs Built-In Title Templates Easily add and edit a Title or ScoreBoard from the many built in templates or build your own using any Graphics or Vector editing software. Adjust Text, Font Size and Colour and Real-Time with instant updates. Video Delay / Instant Replay Create a Video Delay input and assign it to any available Camera or Output Save multiple Video Clips of notable events for playback at a later time Configurable slow motion playback from 5 to 400% Full four camera slow motion instance replay also available, see vMix Replay Web Browser Input Display a website directly in vMix. Full use of mouse and the ability to scroll pages. Natively supports browser audio and HTML 5 video playback! No need for an additional computer just to bring in a browser, do it all through vMix! Built-In Audio Mixer Audio Mixer allows you to easily keep track of all audio sources and includes the ability to Mute, Follow (Auto Mixing) and Delay any source. A VU Meter is also included with a peaking display to ensure each inputs level is broadcast ready. Fine tune every audio source with built in EQ, Compressor and Noise Gate effects Live Video Effects Colour Correct, Deinterlace, Sharpen, Zoom, Rotate, Pan and Crop any input in real time. All effects are processed in 4:4:4 32bit colour space for optimal video quality. Multi View Combine multiple inputs together using the different "Multi View" presets or customise the position of each element with the available Zoom, Pan, Rotate and Crop controls. Video Cameras - 4K, HD and SD capable. Support for Webcams and capture cards. NDI - Send and receive high quality, low latency video and audio on the local network between vMix systems and any NDI compatible sources. See NDI Video Files - Support for all popular formats including AVI, MP4, H264, MPEG-2, WMV, MOV and MXF. Audio Files - MP3 and WAV Audio Devices - Mix multiple audio sources such as SoundCards, ASIO Audio Interfaces and capture card audio Video and Audio PlayLists - Combine multiple video and/or audio files into a single Input. Web Browser, RTSP, PowerPoint, Photos, Solid Colour and more. Touch Screen Web Interface Control vMix remotely using the vMix Web Controller on your Surface, iPad, iPhone, Android or other touch screen device using the built in web interface. Customisable shortcut buttons can also be created to activate common production scenarios.	I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media. Needs a capture card Capture Devices: PCIe, Thunderbolt, USB Audio: USB, ASIO, Soundcard		Simultaneous Streaming, Recording, and Output Live stream to your favourite streaming providers including Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitch and Ustream. Live Record in full HD to AVI, MP4, MPEG-2 or WMV Output via AJA, Blackmagic and Bluefish cards to professional recording decks and monitors Virtual Camera support for streaming out to 3rd party software such as Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts and VLC. Full NDI Capabilities vMix allows you to send and receive NDI sources to any other NDI compatible device. Use NDI to transmit your output, cameras, audio and graphics across your local network. Connect vMix to your favourite NDI program or device such as Caspar CG, NewBlue Titler, Adobe CC and many more.
http://www.telestream.net/wirecast/overview.htm	Capture. Capture unlimited number of input devices from live camera feeds, iOS cameras, computer desktop, web feeds and more. Produce. Add polish and professionalism to your broadcast with live switching, animated titles, transitions, lower thirds and more.	This site isn’t designed well, and has products that don’t simplify the work. I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media. I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media.		Stream. Use multiformat encoding capabilities and live stream to integrated streaming services & CDNs. View tutorial: how to stream to Facebook Live.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/snowmix/ http://snowmix.sourceforge.net/ Not for windows	Description New version 0.5.1 Released February 9th 2016. Snowmix is a Swiss army knife tool for mixing live and recorded video and audio feeds. It supports 2D and 3D clipping, scaling and transparent overlay of video, png graphics and text. It supports animation of video, images and texts through native commands changing scale, placement, transparency and rotation. Animation and actions can also be controlled through native scripting and an embedded Tcl interpreter. Snowmix is designed for control over low bandwidth links and can work as a standalone CLI based program. Control over both CLI and a TCP connections. Input and outputs can be done through GStreamer pipelines or the GStreamer shmsrc/shmsink API. OS X on Intel and Linux on amd64/i386/i686/ARMv7 and FreeBSD on amd64 supported. Ubuntu/Fedora/Mint/Debian/Chakra/CentOS/OpenSUSE and Linero is supported. Free support in the discussion forum. See Snowmix in action on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/Snowmix4video Features Audio and Video Mixing - Low Overhead Unlimited Number of Audio and Video Feeds Unlimited Video Geometry and Frame Rate Unlimited Vector Based Image and Text Overlay Animation of Images, Texts and Video Feeds Advanced support for Cairo Graphics Primitives Unlimited Scaling, Rotation, Alpha Blending, Gradients and Masking of Images, Texts and Video Low Bandwidth Remote Management and Control Scriptable for Complex Operations Examples included for mixing Live video to YouTube Live, UStream and LiveStream OpenGL hardware accelerated support	I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media.
http://www.avtake.com/cutfourhd.asp	CUTFOUR HD 2015 PROFESSIONAL REAL TIME HD LIVE VIDEO MIXING SOFTWARE You can try CutFour HD 2015 60 days You need Intel Core I7 PC with Windows 7 or Windows 10 and any Blacmagic Design capture card (if you like try live camera inputs) Full HD quality YUV 4:2:2 video fields prosessing with native video camcorder format without any color space conversions Up to six live video input support + inputs for two title overlays, video player, Image source, screen capture and slow motion Video input interface supports Blackmagic Design capture cards with HD-SDI/HDMI/component/S-video/composite video inputs (Depends which I/O device model is used) Full quality YUV4:2:2 video output interface supports Blackmagic Design video output devices Advanced and intuitive easy to use user interface, Bins for titles, images and video files Four channel true color corrector Four channel simultanous Picture in picture sources with cropping and color edges Web video streaming with any streaming software in the same desktop PC Six channel audiomixer with peaking meters and VST plugin support to use audio limiters and compressors! Two channel titles over video with alpha channel support Video insert player with MPEG2,MPEG4 and MJPEG file support Program channel full quality 50mbit capture recording to MJPEG AVI or MPEG2* format with 16 bit /48khz stereo audio Fades, animated wipes and stinger transitions Preview for all video input channels without external video monitors Full screen preview video output via display adapter second port	$400.00I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media.		WEB VIDEO STREAMING WITH ANY VIDEO STREAMING SOFTWARE AND BROADCAST SDI/HDMI OUTPUT CARD SUPPORT Support for example Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder, Microsoft Expression Encoder, Windows Media Encoder 9, VLC and several others encoder applications CutFour HD video/audio virtual output can be used with any Microsoft DirectShow full compatible application as a virtual DirectShow video/audio input device. BASIC SPORT SLOW MOTION FUNCTION IN
https://livestream.com/studio for windows		$800.00 plus board purchases Entry level package is $4000.00 Free for 2 cameras; and one media player; one graphic track;		Yes
https://livestream.com/studio/hd550	Turnkey operation https://livestream.com/studio/hd550	$8,000.00
https://www.vidblasterx.com/	VidBlasterX comes in two editions and is subscription based. A valid licence entitles you to unlimited free upgrades. Try the free trial edition before purchasing.	$99 a year to mix $999 a year to broadcast		Yes
https://vidstudio.com/		Not user friendly
https://switcherstudio.com/		Uses iphones that synch to a pad , not “cameras”; other sites say it uses cameras too, but I couldn’t see that on the site. I think Chance knows about this one.
http://www.dacast.com/blog/multi-camera-live-webcast-beyond/	Encoder
https://livestream.com/studio/features	Graphics Support in Web Control Web Control gives you the ability to remotely control Livestream Studio software using a WebRTC compatible browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). Web Control now includes the ability to fully control your Graphics module, including adding and editing data. Delegate graphics tasks to other team members while you focus on cutting the show on the main Studio interface.Our latest update, Studio 4.2., adds more functionality to this tool. Producers can add Studio Graphics (.lsgfx) files via Dropbox. This features gives users the ability to insert and modify .lsgfx data, as well as full control over your graphic overlays’ settings. Our latest update, Studio 4.2., adds more functionality to this tool. Producers can add Studio Graphics (.lsgfx) files via Dropbox. This features gives users the ability to insert and modify .lsgfx data, as well as full control over your graphic overlays’ settings.	I don’t think that we can stream to Atlys though. “Streaming” means to the software company that we are streaming to facebook or some other live social media. $800 plus hardware $1,999 for PC version (no hardware needed)		Stream Live to Multiple Destinations This update gives producers the opportunity to send a single stream from their encoder to multiple destinations at once. A single stream to the Livestream platform can be delivered to YouTube Live, Periscope, and Twitch simultaneously. Producers can also stream from Studio to Livestream and Facebook Live simultaneously. For a more optimized setup you can also leverage the new simulcasting feature of the Livestream Cloud Platform (Premium and Enterprise plan), which sends a single stream to multiple platforms without clogging your venue’s internet connection.
http://recolive.com/en/	What is the difference between RecoLive MultiCam and RecoLive Switcher? These two apps have lot of features in common. However their main goal is different: RecoLive MultiCam is for HD recording. RecoLive Switcher is for live streaming.	A switcher product – uses iphones and ipads
https://obsproject.com/
manycam.com		50.00
https://www.streamstar.com/streamstar-kits/	Do you own a quality PC system? Expand it’s capabilities and turn it into a professional multi-camera, live TV studio! Streamstar^® KIT \| HD-SDI - is an easy to install software with 2 capture cards package that is the best and most affordable streaming solution on the market. In a few minutes You will be streaming broadcast quality, live video right from your own PC. Fully loaded Streamstar^® live production and streaming software with Instant Replays and Slow Motion playback on all cameras is included. Build on regular PC Platform: Intel Core i7 5820K CPU or similar 6-core porcessor (for up to 720p@50/60 fps streaming) or Intel Core i7 5960X CPU (for up to 1080p@25/30 streaming) 16GB (4 x 4GB quad channel) DDR4, 2133 MHz RAM Windows 7 Professional 64Bit OS 128GB or higher SATA SSD – primary drive 500GB or higher 7200RPM 64MB cache SATA HDD (SSD Recommended) – secondary drive EVGA , PNY or other brands GPU – GTX960 4GB Memory GDDR5 PCI Express x16 3.0 FULL HD Monitor with 19201080 resolution Build on HP Workstations:* HP Z440,640,840 Workstation or higher with Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 1650 v3 CPU (for up to 720p@50/60 fps streaming) or Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 1660 v3 CPU (for up to 1080p@25/30fps streaming) 16GB (4 x 4GB quad channel) DDR4, 2133 MHz RAM Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit OS 128GB or higher SATA SSD – primary drive 500GB or higher 7200RPM 64MB cache SATA HDD (SSD Recommended) – secondary drive Video Card: EVGA , PNY or other brands GPU – GTX960 4GB Memory GDDR5 PCI Express x16 3.0 or NVIDIA Quadro K2200 4GB Memory GDDR5 PCI Express x16 2.0 or NVIDIA Quadro K4200 4GB Memory GDDR5 PCI Express x16 2.0 FULL HD Monitor with 1920*1080 resolution

Warren Heaton10841144

Community Expert

I am actually producing actual shows for an actual broadcast and want to mix without taking out a loan.

You work in broadcast and can't afford a mixer?

That seems contradictory.

It does seem contradictory, right?

It's been awhile since I've been involved in budgeting, but a show on DIY Network would have about $50,000 per episode while a show on Bravo would have $200,000. It wouldn't surprise me though if those numbers have gotten lower.

Mevo works surprising well for making one camera look like it's three or more cameras, but the production has to allow for its pseudo-camera angles as it's just one camera. Mevo Camera by Livestream

Civi, have you had a chance to check out Mevo?

Meg The Dog

Inspiring

cicichambers wrote
but I am wondering if one of the Adobe programs can be used (even with an adaptation) as a live camera switcher, where the "main" screen is what is recorded?

It cannot. You need a hardware solution. Fortunately there is a great number of devices for that purpose available, one like this:

Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio HD

Do a little Googling and there are many others to choose from.

MtD

CiCiChambersAuthor

Participant

LOL You're assuming I haven't "done a little googling" and I also don't want to spend $3000. I have found there is usually a way and it takes digging to find it. That's what brought me here after a week of "doing a little googling". And I understand there may also be A PIECE Of hardware that intermediates between the camera and the program; as I had mentioned in my original post.

Thank you.

Content

Professional HD production on a modest PC

HD Virtual Sets with high quality real-time Chroma Key

Built-In Title Templates

Video Delay / Instant Replay

Web Browser Input

Built-In Audio Mixer

Live Video Effects

Multi View

Touch Screen Web Interface

Full NDI Capabilities

Capture.

Produce.

Stream.

Description

Features

CUTFOUR HD 2015 PROFESSIONAL REAL TIME HD LIVE VIDEO MIXING SOFTWARE

WEB VIDEO STREAMING WITH ANY VIDEO STREAMING SOFTWARE AND BROADCAST SDI/HDMI OUTPUT CARD SUPPORT

BASIC SPORT SLOW MOTION FUNCTION IN

VidBlasterX comes in two editions and is subscription based. A valid licence entitles you to unlimited free upgrades. Try the free trial edition before purchasing.

Graphics Support in Web Control

Stream Live to Multiple Destinations

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded

CUTFOUR HD 2015
PROFESSIONAL REAL TIME HD LIVE VIDEO MIXING SOFTWARE