Wirecast and UStream Live Broadcasting

So, you can see our setup. The video camera on the tripod was shooting the speaker at the podium. There is another video camera sitting on the desktop (actually on some battery boxes to make it the right height and angle) that was only trained on the auditorium screen. The computer on the left was for monitoring the live broadcast's sound and video, which my associate, Kim Winck did while she operated the video camera that followed each speaker. The one on the right was the one I used to run Wirecast and broadcast to UStream. Luckily we were able to get a wired connection in there so we didn't have to compete with the folks in the audience using wireless connections.

They had an RCA line level audio output there (on the right just below the desktop) where we could just plug in to the house sound. I used a stereo RCA to 1/8" audio jack to plug into my Mac's audio Line In jack. Normally plugging in to the Line In will result in poor audio, but since this was line level audio I was able to get good sound. If it's not, you need to use a USB adapter for your mic input. 

Once I got the audio and video hooked up, I turned the cameras on before starting Wirecast. I had settings saved from a couple weeks of testing that I used which made setup easier. If you don't have your cameras on, it will ask you to identify the video sources you have listed in your settings. Once they're on and working you can see which video source you want to switch to and just click on it to toggle between them. You have a choice of many transitions, but I just used a simple fade, which worked well.

Wirecast and UStream both have an archiving feature. Just click the Record button and Wirecast will save a copy of the broadcast to your hard drive already compressed. UStream will also do this and will allow you to go back and trim some video off the beginning and/or end of the video after it's available. I did run into issues with both of them, however, and it was very disappointing. Since we were doing a live broadcast and the sessions were an hour and a half long, somewhere along the line we would have had to stop the broadcast and put in a new tape, then reconnect to UStream, which would start a separate video. I did not want to do this, because initially we were going to have to use a wireless connection and I didn't want to risk not being able to connect again, and the fact that it would break up the live broadcast. So I opted to rely on Wirecast's recording to my hard drive. I figured that between Wirecast and UStream we should get a good recording. I was wrong. 

When I reviewed a couple of the recorded videos on UStream, I found that the audio was out of synch. We're not talking a few frames here, I mean that the audio from one person was playing while another person on the video was speaking. Checking my hard drive for the recordings that Wirecast made, I found that the problem was even worse. On one video the audio did not start until 29 minutes into the video, and all the audio that would have been after the video stopped recording was of course lost. I was able to save a couple of the presentations by re-synching the audio with the video in QuickTime Pro, but the rest were lost. This was very disappointing, needless to say. The session I recorded after the one that went incredibly bad seemed good, so I have no idea what went awry. It was a bit disconcerting after all the tests I had run previously. 

I think if I were to do this again, I would split the audio feed to both cameras so that they play audio when the camera is switched. I would also try to convince the event planners to try and keep the sessions under 80 minutes, which would then fit on a tape. That way we'd have a good backup source (although it would take a lot of work to resynch both videos). As it was, though, we were able to do a live broadcast, which included chat, and we were able to record most of the sessions for later playback, which I was able to upload to our YouTube presence the next day with very little editing.