Capture device recommendations for church service

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NHDad2Three

New Member
New to this OBS-enabled broadcasting so this may go off the rails.

I'm want to livestream a church service using 2 HD camcorders. I've got a laptop with 2 - USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.0 ports that is running OBS. Both cameras have mini-HDMI connections on them. Any recommendations for a capture device(s) that will help me get this done?

TIA
NHD23
 
Dee Adesanwo

Dee Adesanwo

Member
My suggestion would be to get a USB3 based capture device rather USB2 due to some latency issues i've heard of with USB2, but since you only have 1 USB3 port that cant be helped.

I livestream our church service to both youtube and facebook using this setup:
www.youtube.com

Free OBS Multi Streaming To YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, etc

How to use OBS Studio & Nginx to stream YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and multiple platforms for FREE. No fees or sacrificing video quality like other popular fr...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

For capturing from the camera I used this with my laptop for $60 (not for sale anymore)
and I have zero latency issues. I would check ebay for something similar e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/HDMI-to-US...ongle-Card-for-Linux-Windows-Mac/333102533538

But your mileage will vary with these devices because they are all generic brands.
 
A

Al Floyd

New Member
NHDad2Three
Welcome.

You can probably add a 3.0 USB hub to your laptop and then hookup both camcorders to the same 3.0 port.

We are using this 3.0 card https://www.newegg.com/plugable-usbc-cap60/p/2CX-0059-00001?Item=9SIA2XB8N97105 to capture our camcorder. It is about $100.
We are also testing this USB 2.0 card https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0894Q55JK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 for around $30 and it seems to be working fine so far.

Are you also looking at putting your lyrics and Bible verses in the live stream?
 
N

NHDad2Three

New Member
Al Floyd said:
NHDad2Three
Welcome.

You can probably add a 3.0 USB hub to your laptop and then hookup both camcorders to the same 3.0 port.

We are using this 3.0 card https://www.newegg.com/plugable-usbc-cap60/p/2CX-0059-00001?Item=9SIA2XB8N97105 to capture our camcorder. It is about $100.
We are also testing this USB 2.0 card https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0894Q55JK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 for around $30 and it seems to be working fine so far.

Are you also looking at putting your lyrics and Bible verses in the live stream?
Click to expand...
Eventually. Want to get walking first.
 
L

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
Though you didn't ask, just a suggestion to NOT go cheap on the cables from the camcorder to PC. We've been using a webcam which has worked fine when no one else is present, and will be ordering a NDI PTZ camera this week (so no capture card required), so I don't personally have experience with this. But depending on distance from cameras to laptop, you'll have to decide on length of HDMI cables vs USB cables. There are numerous resources about relative merits of either approach. I've personally talked with folks who said they could reliably run quality USB cables 60ft... ymmv.
 
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NHDad2Three

New Member
Thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions. I purchased a pair of the USB 2.0 devices suggested by a couple of you and they appear to work perfectly. But it's led me to my next question. I'm using a pair of camcorders to acquire the video and the video appears properly in OBS. But I can't find a way to get audio from those cameras. I can see a new audio device appear when the camera is connected but I don't get any audio when recording. Thoughts?
 
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Al Floyd

New Member
Do you know for sure that your camcorders actually send out audio on the HDMI cable. Ours does not.
We grab the sound from the church's sound board.
Another thing, is the video from the camcorders clean? I mean does it have things like the word "Menu" on the picture?
Ours does, but we strip it out with a splitter box.
 
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NHDad2Three

New Member
Al Floyd said:
Do you know for sure that your camcorders actually send out audio on the HDMI cable. Ours does not.
We grab the sound from the church's sound board.
Another thing, is the video from the camcorders clean? I mean does it have things like the word "Menu" on the picture?
Ours does, but we strip it out with a splitter box.
Click to expand...
These were all good questions which I was answering for myself right after I wrote my post. One of the 2 camcorders is strictly consumer - it does not put audio out via HDMI (why?) and there is no way to get "clean" video. The other is a Canon XA11 and it will do both audio over HDMI and clean video. So I was halfway there. Then I remembered that I have a Panasonic Lumix FZ300 which has micro USB and can do both clean video and audio over that link. So I think I have the cameras I'll need though I won't know for sure until a new micro-to-HDMI cable arrives tomorrow.
 
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Al Floyd

New Member
We use this to "clean" the video from our camcorder. One micro HDMI-to-HDMI cable to this splitter, then a 35 ft HDMI cable to the capture box - we do not use the second output.
Does the Panasonic Lumix FZ300 use micro USB or micro HDMI for output?
Also we feel that using only one source for sound works best. It's okay to switch video, but sounds weird when you switch audio sources.

 
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NHDad2Three

New Member
Al Floyd said:
We use this to "clean" the video from our camcorder. One micro HDMI-to-HDMI cable to this splitter, then a 35 ft HDMI cable to the capture box - we do not use the second output.
Does the Panasonic Lumix FZ300 use micro USB or micro HDMI for output?
Also we feel that using only one source for sound works best. It's okay to switch video, but sounds weird when you switch audio sources.

Click to expand...
So this device removes the menus and on-screen mess from a regular camcorder? I don't see anything in the details that explains that.

Also, not sure how I will be able to do a single audio source. This is an outdoor service with the pulpit and electronic keyboard separated by ~30 feet. A camera/mic pointed at one source will not do a very good job with the other. When we move inside I should be able to use the church's sound system for my single audio source.

This explains why I've been looking for 2 video & audio sources.
 
N

NHDad2Three

New Member
Al Floyd said:
Yes, it was a pleasant surprise for us - nothing in the manual about removing the overlays.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I'll keep that in mind for the future.

BTW - I just completed a couple of tests with the Canon and the Panasonic and it appears that they're both working properly. I get separate video and audio from each and the image is clean from both. Now to move the testing to the outdoor chapel and see how that goes.
 
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Al Floyd

New Member
Good luck with the outdoor chapel.

My guess is that the answer to your next major question is going to be "NDI".
 
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Al Floyd

New Member
LOL, thanks for the good chuckle.

It's a free add-in to OBS and to your computers, that enables you to get videos, slides, lyrics etc from one computer to another.

We use NDI to get the slides from our presentation MAC computer into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the "green screen" effect for lyrics and bible verses into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the output of a webcam connected to another computer into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the output of OBS into a virtual webcam for use in a Zoom meeting.
We use NDI to get the output of OBS on our YouTube streaming computer into OBS on our FaceBook Streaming computer.

Once you have more than one computer involved, NDI may be the answer.

In an outdoor situation if long distances are involved it may be better to connect cameras to two separate computers and use ethernet and NDI to connect them, rather than using long USB or HDMI cables.
 
N

NHDad2Three

New Member
Al Floyd said:
LOL, thanks for the good chuckle.

It's a free add-in to OBS and to your computers, that enables you to get videos, slides, lyrics etc from one computer to another.

We use NDI to get the slides from our presentation MAC computer into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the "green screen" effect for lyrics and bible verses into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the output of a webcam connected to another computer into our OBS computer.
We use NDI to get the output of OBS into a virtual webcam for use in a Zoom meeting.
We use NDI to get the output of OBS on our YouTube streaming computer into OBS on our FaceBook Streaming computer.

Once you have more than one computer involved, NDI may be the answer.

In an outdoor situation if long distances are involved it may be better to connect cameras to two separate computers and use ethernet and NDI to connect them, rather than using long USB or HDMI cables.
Click to expand...
I'm definitely not ready to start thinking about 2 computers being involved. Don't have enough network connectivity for 2 computers right now anyway. Something to be aware of as I settle into all of this though.
 
Dee Adesanwo

Dee Adesanwo

Member
Yes NDI is awesome, we use it for the slides from the Powerpoint PC during our service.

...We use NDI to get the output of OBS on our YouTube streaming computer into OBS on our FaceBook Streaming computer.
Click to expand...
@Al Floyd, I'm curious why you have two computers for streaming to youtube and facebook, when you could multi stream like in the video tutorial i posted, or use this plugin I just found out about:

Multiple RTMP outputs plugin

homepage: https://sorayuki.github.io/obs-multi-rtmp/ The page is written in Japanese because it's a plugin originally build for vtubers. This is a plugin to streaming to multiple RTMP servers concurrently. It's able to share encoders with main...
obsproject.com obsproject.com
 
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Al Floyd

New Member
Dee Adesanwo said:
@Al Floyd, I'm curious why you have two computers for streaming to youtube and facebook, when you could multi stream like in the video tutorial i posted, or use this plugin I just found out about:

Multiple RTMP outputs plugin

homepage: https://sorayuki.github.io/obs-multi-rtmp/ The page is written in Japanese because it's a plugin originally build for vtubers. This is a plugin to streaming to multiple RTMP servers concurrently. It's able to share encoders with main...
obsproject.com obsproject.com
Click to expand...

No reason really. When we started streaming a little over a year ago, this is the way we found to stream to YouTube at 1080p and Facebook at 720p at the same time. We are learning more everyday and are reviewing both of these approaches now.
 
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