KenCast Wireless Vazzt WebCasting in Bermuda
Wireless WebCasting in Paradise
This week we had the chance to produce a WebCast video shoot in Bermuda. The event was a wedding of the CEO of a Fortune 50 company.
This is the beach at Horseshoe Cove, Bermuda when we arrived in the morning. Our crew and half the wedding party couldn’t resist the urge to dive in. One of the bridesmaids is in the foreground.
No, we don’t do weddings.
It ‘s not that we turn our noses up at this kind of video/photo shoots. We have lots of respect for those who do this week and do it well.. It’s just that we have enough on our plate with regular studio and location work. But this client had used us many times in the past (We WebCast his corporate meetings) and he wanted us to stream live his wedding to a limited number of VIP guests who could not attend.
The event was nothing short of spectacular. It was to take place at the world famous Horseshoe beach. The kind you only see on postcards.
He had his amazing yacht parked nearby. There were about distinguished 300 guests.
from, the Wall Street and entertainment arenas.
Naturally, we all had to sign NDA’a and security went so far as to insist on holding our mobile phones so nothing leaked out to the web. This was all very understandable. It was a private affair and while we were WebCasting it, the stream was going only to a highly select number of viewers around the world.
Our first challenge was the daunting fact that we we’re shooting on the beach and then later on his yacht.
No Ethernet connection for miles.
Fortunately we had the Vazzt system on board. This is a piece of technology from KenCast.com. It enabled us to use our TriCaster 850 to mix from eight cameras ( two of which were roaming mobile) as well as prerecorded video of the bride and groom we had shot and edited earlier. The TriCaster allows us to mix the 1080p video and two audio tracks, width a full range of graphic effects and send it out live over the web.
The VazztCast system also handled the wireless transmission of the HD signal from the roaming cameras back to the TriCaster and then the program out of the TriCaster went up to the cloud and down and out to the Internet worldwide.
We did not require a satellite truck or a dish, etc. This was done basically with just standard, professional HD cameras, (eight Sony EX3’s) the TriCaster 850 (TCXD 850), the VazztCast system installed on a laptop for the TriCaster and one for each roaming camera.
That was it.
So simple and so successfully.
We used the Tricaster TimeWarp to slo mo the kiss! Couldn’t resist.
We relied on the KenCast Vazzt Video-On-The-Move (VOTM) products
Here’s a little video the Bill Steel at KenCast and I put together as we prepped he event at our stage in Tribeca..
Just FYI Ive included copy form the www.KenCast.com site.
The IBIS Server appliance is a camera system that can optimize your performance on the road, streaming live video in HD. The compact IBIS box weighs a mere 11/2 pounds and attaches directly to the camera. Because it contains a computer on a chip, no computer or backpack is necessary. With the chip, there is almost no weight, minimal power required, and very little heat generated. The IBIS takes a standard SDI feed from the camera, and operates up to 3 hours on its internal battery or hot-swaps to an optional 6-hour external battery. It can also be directly attached to the camera’s battery.
The IBIS can bond up to 4 wireless 3G/4G aircards for enough bandwidth to transmit live high definition video back to its Central Hub. It has an intercom interruptable feedback (IFB) feature, as well as a tally light to alert the cameraman and the reporter when they are live on-air.
There is also a memory card slot, and an Ethernet port to off-load locally captured video files to a laptop for field editing, as well as the ability to transmit edited files back to the Central Hub. The unit comes with a protective case and four slots to secure the aircards during operation.
| EdgeSpan Studio Server – Easily Manage Complex Feeds The one-rack unit EdgeSpan Studio appliance is a server that receives H.264 feeds from the Internet from up to four field cameras simultaneously. The feeds are processed by the Studio Software which can select and output one of the feeds on an SDI channel from any of the four input sources. The larger three-rack unit can output all four video feeds simultaneously. The EdgeSpan can also store the live video feeds into files for subsequent broadcasts. |
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The administrator at the hub has full control of the VazztCaster software that is sending live streams and files to the EdgeSpan. He/she can configure the settings and choose other options: Pass through and/or record, and/or put on the website.The Studio application software is user-friendly and the system administrator has easy remote access to IBIS appliances in support of cameramen in the field. |