Live Broadcasting - Recommendations/help

B

Bob002

Gawd
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
884
Live broadcasting seems to cover this better than anything else I could think of.

I am a fighter, and my coach is also a promoter. We (but mostly him) run a small, amateur MMA show in Southern Missouri. We want to start broadcasting, but are running into some issues.

Now, we WERE able to get the show broadcast last night, but had issues. The cameras we have (I think they are Canon with Firewire and HDMI outs, and no, I don't know the specific model number at this point) work fine. What doesn't work is the firewire. Well, it works, but obviously the firewire cable is limited to 15 foot without repeaters.

Now, we were able to get them workign with repeaters. But if someone touches on in the wrong manner, something messes up, and it's way too easy to have someone do that. We actually had the guy doing the video under the cage last night with his laptop so we could get necessary lengths.

Is there some sort of accessory that can be plugged into the camera end and broadcast to another on the computer end? that would eliminate like 99% of the problems. Probably radio frequency or bluetooth?

Or is there something else I could use that would work? I need help because the stress may actually give me a heart attack.
 
Last edited:
There are devices (baluns) to run Firewire over standard UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cabling - such as Cat6 network cables.

It sounds like the repeaters you are using are just like four port hubs which aren't really that stable, especially once you start to daisy-chain them.

There are a lot of devices which do what you describe but they get very expensive, quick. The biggest advantage of using Firewire is that you don't need to have any special video interfaces in the computer, which helps a lot, especially on a laptop.

There are a couple companies like Kramer that make firewire baluns.
 
What about an HDMI to firewire adapter of some sort?

If I can have the HDMI run all the way to the computer and have it switch to firewire, that would work, as well. I see what you mean about the baluns, but right now I'm realllllllllly limited on the cord length.
 
You can't just switch HDMI to Firewire. You need an interface that can convert HDMI (which is a video-specific thing) to something the computer can actually work with. There are cards that do this cheaply, but the fact that you have a laptop (which can't take PCI/PCI-E) makes this somewhat difficult. Hauppage might make something, but I don't have any experience using consumer gear in this application.

Just as a quick question - what model is the laptop, and does it have USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt? If so, you could use a Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle (around $250) plus some HDMI baluns.

Alternatively, you might look into running standard definition. Composite video + stereo audio baluns are quite cheap, and these are much cheaper to get into the computer, simply because they don't require as much resources as HD video.
 
There are lots of ways to do this, and lots of them cost lots of money. a computer with each camera would not be the most expensive way

Sending multiple firewire cameras to one computer is probably the least ideal way, but if youve already spent money on it...
 
Just a slight update.

The cameras in question are Canon Vixia HV40s. Supposedly they have component and composite outs, but that means I need something to convert it. That *might* be the cheaper option.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top