Now we can stream!!

In my last post, I gave you my idea for a multi-purpose camera rig. This time I’ll be fleshing that rig out to give us a live streaming setup for productions and live events. The camera rig will be the same except this time we’ll have 4 of them paired with a few other goodies. So without further ado, let’s get to it.

The Switcher

For the switcher, I’ve chosen Blackmagic Design’s ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K. It has 8 12G-SDI inputs that all have a standard converter built-in, so no matter what resolution the inputs are, we can stream at 4K.

And don’t worry about the HDMI outputs on our BMPCC 6K camera—we’ll be dealing with that in our floor rack later.

Monitoring

To monitor the video streams, I’ve chosen 2 SmartView 4K monitors from, you guessed it, Blackmagic Design. Each of the monitors has 2 x 12G-SDI inputs so that we can switch between multiple sources on each monitor. This comes in handy later.

Playback

For playback, we’ll be using 3 Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Studio Minis. These little beauties are able to output 2 streams of 4K each, meaning that you can play graphics with key and fill, such as titles or lower thirds.

The HyperDecks can also record media too, so if you need a copy of your production to give to the organizers of the event straight away, you're all sorted.

They only have 6G-SDI, but the ATEM's built-in standards converter will easily handle the footage coming from the HyperDeck.

Live Graphics

For live graphics, we’ll be using 2 M1 Mac minis from Apple. These Apple Silicon-based Macs have more than enough power to run mimoLive.

To get the key and fill for these graphics out of the Macs, though, we are going to need a capture and playback card. For that, I’ve chosen 2 Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 4K Minis—one for each Mac mini.

As you can input a video feed to the UltraStudio 4K, you can send a clean feed to it from the switcher and overlay any additional graphics, such as lower thirds or graphics for a live stream, straight out of mimoLive.

Other Main Rack Gear

We need a few other bits to complete our main rack.

First up is Blackmagic Design’s Smart Videohub 20x20. The video hub should give us more than enough inputs and outputs so we can switch feeds on the fly should we need to during production.

As well as a video hub, we’ll also need a network switch. For this, I’ve gone with Ubiquiti’s 16-port PoE Switch paired with the Dream Machine Pro as a controller, which also gives us another 8 non-PoE ports. This may seem like a little overkill, but should you want to add more devices to the network, it’ll be more than worth it.

Stage Rack

The stage rack is how we are going to connect our audio and video feeds to the ATEM. At the bottom is the Yamaha Tio 1608-D Dante stage box. Above this, there will be a 16-port patch panel for XLR connections and optical connections from the switch to be sent into the box.

Next up, we have another Ubiquiti 16-Port PoE Switch to connect to the HDMI to Optical Teranex Mini Convertersfrom Blackmagic Design. I went for this model as they include 2 XLR inputs on each to send the audio from the Dante network to the ATEM. The converters also give us 6 SDI outs at stage level too, so if you want to give each of your camera ops a feed or send a feed to projectors, you're good to go.

Inside, we also have 2 Dante AVIO Analog Input Adapters for the 2 converters that we don’t have outputs for on the stage box.

Finally, on the back, we have an MTP to Optical breakout cable feeding each of the HDMI to Optical converters. There is an MTP trunk running from the stage box to the control area. This MTP trunk carries 24 optical fibers: 12 for the converters, 4 for the network switch, and 8 spares for future use (I’m sure I can always use more cameras!).

There are a few more bits and pieces needed that I think I have covered in the list below.

Complete Equipment Budget Breakdown

To have a full 4-camera 6K multi-cam setup for just under £73,000, I think is fantastic. Let me know if you found any of the goodies I didn’t mention interesting. I know that I snuck in a couple of gadgets that will make production just a tad easier.