Question / Help Help & Suggestions for Live Streaming Event

[Juri]

Hi guys

There is a karate championship coming up and since the media guys were double booked I have been asked to live stream this event. I have no experience with this (I am just the guy who "knows about computers"), and I was hoping you would give me some suggestions or tell me if I am way off track. I have exactly one month left before the event but I want to do a test run at least a week before to make sure everything is fine.

I am not getting paid for this and I don't think I will keep streaming after this event so I am not really interested in investing in high quality hardware but I will purchase the minimum required for an international standard.

The championship will be indoors from morning to night and it will be 3 days long. There will be 6 floors with kumite's and kata's going on and the rostrum/podium area. I think it will be impossible but I might as well ask, is there any way I would be able to hook up 7 cameras and either let the viewer choose which to watch or cycle through them myself in OBS? It will just be me managing the stream, probably with one laptop and mobile wifi. I would also need to go and do my kata's and kumite's so some automation would be nice. Otherwise I'll go ahead and assume we are working with one overview webcam of the whole event.

I am in South Africa so my choices in webcams are limited to what is available on www.takealot.com.

I am leaning towards the Logitech C9--'s but is there a valid reason for me to get a ~$170 webcam or will it be more or less the same as a ~$30 one? Are there webcams that work better with OBS? Should I go for one with nightvision or will the overhead lights be enough? If I am on 3G, what is the best quality I can hope to stream?

I have a Canon 100D and a tripod but the best I was able to achieve was to get the EOS Utility Remote Shooting to display on my monitor and then use Monitor Capture in OBS but this seems like it would make working on a laptop with one monitor tricky if something goes wrong.

Lastly, will YouTube be my best bet to stream this event? Do I need to do something special to make it available everywhere? If I create a new account especially for this event, like karatechampsSA2015, how hard would it be get that account in good standing?

Thank you so much for any answers or suggestions and I apologize if I posted this is in the wrong place, I could not find an absolute noob way out of his depth area.

 

[Cryonic]

This will be hard. So you need at least 6 cameras. This will most likely kill your USB (not really, but that might be a problem, specially with something like the C920 from Logitech).
Opt for 720p webcams, i have an old Creative VF700 here and it produces a decent image, is really cheap, works fine and you should be able to find them for like 20$ USD each.
Also dont forget that USB signals cant travel over a long distance. You will need a method to bring the camera in a good position, remember that cheap webcams have no tripod mount.
The second problem: you are sitting on a 3G connection. This is highly unstable (being a shared meduim with a big event there, your bandwith will break down to speeds that we had in the early 90`s). It is simple - the mobile cell has a limited bandwith, lets say 1gbit/s. It shares this bandwith with any mobile device that is connected to the tower. If you have a championship, that means you will have all the local guys + all guests with their shiny new smartphones, making pictures and videos and uploading them right away. Even a 4G LTE connection would break down. Say goodbye to your speed. You can avoid this while using wired internet (ADSL2+, VDSL, Coax, Fibre whatever they use there) with at least 2mbit/s upload, that will be enough for a good output at 720p 25fps.
As a DJ i work sometimes at pretty big events. Mobile speed there is enough to check your e-mails after like 5-10 times hammering the refresh button. And this is the best case, the worst case - even pure text based things like jabber dont work anymore.
Third problem: operating it. If you have to leave the place to participate or just go do your natural things, you need someone to replace you. Grab your girlfriend or a friend (best would be someone who knows at least some general stuff about streaming/video editing).
The viewer will have no option to switch between cameras, so you have to do it. You can also hook in the audio from the commentator booth (if you have any) or commentate yourself (this is pretty easy to solve, mostly because you can rent audio gear - and most likely the tournament organisator is also renting his audio gear just for the event - it will be cheaper than buying it).

And the last one: Youtube is fine. Has the biggest audience and works best, but you may want to use other streaming sites for different reasons. Up to you. If you stream to youtube, make sure that no copyrighted music is used, not even a mobile phone ringing with a popular song behind your microphone.


If you dont get paid for this - make them at least pay for the equipment (rented or not, doesnt matter).
I would do a project with this scale only for a hefty amount of money, just because its a ton of work.

Ask the organisator what he really wants. Promotion online for free? Not even renting the equipment? If so - avoid and ignore him. Streaming big events is big business.

 

[Juri]

Thank you Cryonic, you have a couple of good points. I never thought about the mobile cell and all the other people. That might be what makes it impossible since even if I wanted to I won't get the ISP to install anything in time.

It seems like the best I could do even with ADSL would be the one 720p webcam probably with no sound because I don't know enough to commentate. It makes it seem kind of pointless but at least I know enough now to say why it won't work.