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.
An entire second?! Jeez that’s a long time. I’ll try to think of some fixes for that problem – it could be pretty tricky with that hardware configuration because it doesn’t look like there’s a way to sync it with an external clock. Typically, you’d need a common clock and positional reference (SMPTE and a Word Clock) to sync multiple video devices, but you’re working with straight up computers and software so I don’t know how’d you sync them. Do those Black Magic cards have any sort of time code or clock connections (BNC, S/PDIF, ADAT, AES/EBU). Or a breakout cable with something like that on it?
-Adam
As a matter of fact, they DO have a breakout! Until now I had been using the sound cards built in audio, but I got to thinking, if I use the audio on the Blackmagic Intensity card I may be able to sync it back up since both will probably be delayed equally.
There is a problem though. The Blackmagic Intensity * only* runs at 48kHz and Flash Media Encoder only with with 48kHz if you buy the AAC audio plugin for $200.00. Not a big deal, but I don’t want to drop $200.00 on a plugin if it doesn’t help solve the problem.
Luckily there is a 30 second demo version that will allow me to play with it to see if it works. I’ll be giving that a shot and hoping that everything syncs up! If not, I do have a solution wherein I’ll run the audio though Audio Hijack Pro, add three different delays to get the amount of time I need, and run from there. It will be hard to find the exact right timing though, so I would prefer keep it all on the card if I can.
Can you relate how you solved your previous problem where the HDMI video into the PC was too agressive for the FME to stream?
I am actually trying to accomplish the exact same thing you are. I suspect it’s just FME settings.
Also are you able to get HD resolutions out of camtwist? I thought it was limited to low res output
Thanks
– Keith
Kramer makes a few devices in the kramer tools line
http://www.kramerelectronics.com/indexes/item.asp?name=VA-256xl
Oh yeah, you can definitely have delay problems if your sample rate isn’t the same. 44.1 to 48 won’t be very cooperative.
“but everyone on the face of the planet likes space travel and everyone likes me, so I’m good there”
Just gotta *love* that quote.
~ Ze Kat
Hey Ben,
Been checking into this big ball you got rolling. Nice venture you got going. After reading this post I may have found something but not sure if things would work properly. Looking at the CamTwist website it said that it supported AU plugins. Looking at AU plugins I ran across this little tool.
http://www.dontcrack.com/freeware/downloads.php/id/4875/software/Sound-Delay/
Don’t know if it will help any or not but something to try at least.
Beckwith
I have had some luck with using a Line6 UX-1 to import the audio. It is just a usb box that takes XLR or stereo 1/4 and does the a/d conversion. The real interesting thing is that it comes with some software that has some really great compression, mic modeling and delay. You can add just enough delay to get the audio back i sync and have all the great compression also. It has really helped out with the ustream experience.
also, I know you are kinda the camtwist guru out there. How do you record the signal out of camtwist? I love the quality you get on vimeo but I cant find a way to get the same quality out of 1.7 or even record our of camtwist… any help?
Cant wait for the new and improved show!