Live Broadcasting

It looks like a hodge podge of wires and stuff, and it is. This is what I use to "broadcast live" from my studio. (See photo on right)

Here's how it's done.

I take a feed from my Canon HV30 {not pictured} and pipe it into the Panasonic WJ-MX20, audio is wired in separately from the microphone through the audio mixer and out of the video mixer.

We also take a video feed from the laptop into the video mixer and it's audio is separate into the audio mixer.

It all comes together at a USB hub that is plugged into my editing computer {not pictured} where we run the Livestream Broadcaster and send the signal out to the web.

Edith sits at my editing computer and starts the broadcast, records it, and displays the lower thirds and graphic slates. I switch in real time while conducting the interview with a guest on Skype. The guest is on the laptop. I can mix from the guest on Skype (laptop) to myself (HV30) and do picture-in-picture or dissolves.

With the "One Take" button on the WJ-MX20 I can set the effects up prior to the show and simply touch one button to switch views.

The USB hub I feed the video into my editing computer is the little USB plug in that comes with Magix Rescue Your Videotapes. Livestream sees it as a web camera and takes the feed. So all the mixing is done before it enters the computer and goes out on the air, freeing the computer up from this task since hardware (WJ-MX20) is doing the work. This helps with the frame rate and keeping the audio in sync.

Once the video is sent to Livestream, adding lower thirds and graphic screens is easy in their broadcaster. It's all done from Chrome in the browser. Here is what a recording of our live broadcast looks like:

This is totally cool and pretty easy to set up. You can get a used WJ-MX20 off Ebay pretty cheap and the other stuff is easy to find. You need the video mixer, a camera, two computers, two monitors (preview & output) and internet, plus the USB gadget from Magix. Functionality is much like a TV station or mini-network.

We are still working on our format but live broadcasting appears to be a hit. ;-)