Stream and Record from the Same Computer

[cw4u]

Right now, I've got two separate computers recording and streaming the service. I want to try to combine that into one computer.

We are running firewire out of the DV deck into a desktop computer and a firewire out to my laptop. The laptop streams while the desktop records. Streaming is done via Ustream Producer Pro and capture is done through Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

I want to do both the streaming and recording off of one computer. The desktop is a quad core Xeon so I feel confident that it would be able to do both tasks at once. Right now, we're all analog but we're making an eventual move to HD-SDI. So I would like something that could accept analog inputs while being able to eventually accept HD-SDI.

Now, if I wanted to stick with the firewire route, could I just add a firewire hub to the DV deck line and send two outputs to the computer? The only hesitency I have towards firewire is the lack of color depth/detail and the horrible encoding with darker colors.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

[petereit]

You'll need a desktop system with two independent video capture boards, because each of the two software applications is going to "own" the video input from each board. I'm not even sure what you describe is possible using FireWire.

And when you go HD-SDI, you'd better make sure whatever system you put these cards into has 16x or greater PCI lanes on BOTH slots you're plugging your video capture cards into, and you'll need to add multiple media hard drives in a RAID0 configuration (internal, eSATA or Thunderbolt) so they'll have enough write speed to keep up with the HD stream.

[cw4u]

What about if I use an Intensity Pro card with Flash Live Media Encoder? I could still broadcast to Ustream with a higher quality stream and record it as well, correct?

I know it wouldn't do HD-SDI, but I'm positive we could relocated the intensity pro card when that time comes.

[petereit]

That might work. It depends on what purpose you have for recording your service. If it's just to have a simple archive, or for posting on your web site, then that would be fine. But if you're looking for broadcast-quality recording for editing or creating DVDs, then no, the quality of the recording will not be adequate.

[cw4u]

We're just looking for web archiving at the moment so I think I'll give this a shot and see how it works.

[streamkoinonia]

We've noticed when using the Intensity cards that you can only use each card for one input. So, you would need two cards or use firewire for streaming and the Intensity for recording. We use the DVPro codec in Premiere CS4 using the Intensity card and render to Photo Jpeg @ 63% quality for lossless with added lower thirds. I then do an online version render with MpegStreamclip to a deinterlaced mp4 and upload to Vimeo. This seems to give me the best result, but I'm always open to feedback and better recommendations the community can offer

[cw4u]

That might be a good idea...using firewire for streaming and the intensity card for recording. I'll look into that option once the intensity card arrives and I can evaluate the effectiveness of the flash live encoder output.

[streamkoinonia]

Before we received our Intensity card, I would record to disc and stream using 2 instances of FME. I think I used firewire and a usb capture device ($40) and would take the flv that FME created and ran it through a free program called Flv-converter (www.flv-converter.org) to create an mp4 after service. I was fairly impressed with that temporary process. Although I moved on to larger fish to fry now - running a Windows based switcher. [face palm] I believe most of the sermons before Novermber of last year where done by that method. You can check out examples at vimeo.com/channels/bacc