Bencredible

The MOST IMPORTANT part of video is audio.  If it sounds bad people will leave.  It is too low people will leave.  If it is too high people will leave.  On the other hand your video can look awful, so long as you have great audio they will stay.   Oh yeah, content is important too, but everyone on the face of the planet like space travel and everyone likes me, so I’m good there.

I was going to be ecstatic at my pure brilliance and awesomeness in doing the almost-impossible, but audio got in the way.

Yesterday I wrote about how I was trying to get an HD video setup for $6,000.  Lo and behold I got it to work this evening.  All of it.  I can switch between multiple HD sources, I can add HD graphics and HD CG, heck I can even run HD clips all from the latest beta of CamTwist.  Oh, I even got the streaming to a PC down.  I just send the signal out of my DVI port and in to the PC via a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card and right there in Flash Media Encoder I can steam it live.  Does it look stunning you ask?  Of course it does!  http://www.spacevidcast.com/test/ is where I’m playnig with this.  Watch that live video and you’ll soon notice a problem:  the audio happens a full second before the video.

Crap.

So I’m a lot closer than I was yesterday, but now I’m stuck agian.  In my studio the video is delayed by the HDMI capture card by at least a second, possibly close to 2 seconds.  This means that the lip sync is all off and won’t work at all.  I’m using a low-end PC I had laying around, but when I get a higher end box to stream and you can see all 30 frames per second, this will be a really big issue.

I’m looking at solutions from Soundflower, Audio Hijack and possibly some way to delay the incoming audio on the PC input card.  I *might* be able to use one of the Blackmagic Intensity outputs to go HDMI to HDMI and send the digital audio down the line with the video.  Unknown at this time.  I’m also trying to find any hardware that can act as an analog audio delay line on the cheap.  If anyone knows how to delay only the analog audio either on the Macintosh output or the PC input, I would be greatly appreciative!

So close yet so far away.

I like pushing technology in to new and unique spaces. Lets take a peek at my latest works with SpaceVidcast shall we? Today we stream at 320×240 with a stunning 23 frames per second (why 23 and not the standard 24 or 23.976 as it really should be I have no idea, ask Ustream.tv.) I have decided that this isn’t good enough. I want to stream at 640×360 (which is 16:9) and archive at 1280×720 for on-demand distribution. That would be High Definition for those of you wondering.

Problem is, HD switchers are scary expensive. I can get in to a starter switcher for around $20,000 USD but that doesn’t include any of the cameras, DDRs (video deck), CGs (graphics), etc., When it is all said and done I’m probably looking at at $100,000 solution like the Slate 5000 from Broadcast Pix. While that is an uber powerful solution that can do everything I want, and slice bread, and bear my firstborn it is a bit out of my league and even that is a entry-level system (although the high-end of the entry level. Come on, I need more than 1 M/E people.)

How about a video toaster you say? No HD. Tricaster? Same thing. Sony Anycast? Sham. HD inputs that scale to SD for the processing then back to HD for output (hint: that makes it SD, not HD.) So these companies can’t do what I want today. I guess I’ll build my own!

My thought process is actually brilliantly simple. Get a Mac Pro and fill it with three Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards. These cards allow me to capture standard definition analog, high definition analog and high definition digital via HDMI. The Mac Pro is about $3,000 while each Blackmagic card is $350.00. I’m going to round that to $4,000. By adding the FREE CamTwist software I now have an HD switcher that can’t do anything. Oh sure, I can switch between cameras, add graphics, roll DDR clips but I have no place to put these clips. HD is too processor intensive to stream on the same computer and, well, Adobe does not make a Flash Media Encoder for the Mac.

The next piece of the puzzle is to be able to stream that. My plan was to get yet another BlackMagic Intensity Pro card, plug it in to a cheap(ish) PC and run Adobe Flash Media Encoder to stream live. This would be great! I take the second output of the Mac, tell CamTwist to display the full screen video on that screen, grab a $15.00 DVI to HDMI cable and plug the Mac in to the PC. Not only do I offload the computer processing for live streaming on to a completely different box, but I should keep a fairly nice signal since it is pretty much a DVI pass through from one to the other. And at first it looked like it would work!

CamTwist can see the Intensity board! The PC can see the secondary screen from the Mac, which was a worry because the Intensity Pro doesn’t support RGB (luckily my Mac can spit out 4:2:2 YUV). I was almost done, all I needed to do was open Flash Media Encoder and stream to… oh no! Flash Media Encoder can see the Intensity board, but can’t scale it down! The frame rate is an insane unsupported 60.4fps (wha?) and the video is locked to 1280×720. I’m not about to stream THAT on the Internet!

Here I thought I had a $6,000 solution that would make the likes of a $100,000 studio tremble, but I get slapped in the face by Adobe. Again.

As is the issue with all bleeding edge technology there’s that one thing that juuuust doesn’t work right. I found it. Now I need to find a clever workaround so I can get the output of the Mac in to the PC and stream it at 640×360 while archiving at 1280×720. No ideas just yet, but I feel I’m close. Then my dear friends, SpaceVidcast will be HD on-demand and have higher quality live video than even NASA has today for their own launches. Oh yes, I can do this for under $10,000! I just need to avoid using that cursed Flash Media Encoder. I think Adobe just has it out for me.

I’m BACK on Twin Cities Live talking about scanners. I want to personally thank the audio engineer as they have now given me a theme song, and being that I aspire to be an evil villain, a theme song is a requirement! Well done!