Multi person/station shared control

S

SteveCC

New Member
I am pretty new to OBS and this forum but want to figure out how to do something that may be a bit complicated. Please treat me as a newbie and go slow.
I am currently setup and doing live streaming using 3 PTZ cameras with OBS with one person controlling the 3 cameras. One person doing thee Panning, tilting and zooming and switching. We use the Advance Scene switcher a lot of the time but are going to do a performance soon and would like to separate out the switching function to a separate person. The 2 people could be sitting pretty close together.
So, one person doing the PTZ and another person doing manual scene switching.
I am looking for leads to figure out how to do this. Would appreciate any and all suggestions to set this up.
Please also let me know if this is not the best place to ask this question.
Thanks
 
Haven't gotten any leads yet but I've been thinking:
What if we had 2 computers, both running OBS and/or PTZ Control programs/Plugins.
Could both have access to the PTZ cameras?
Could one of them just do the PTZing - Pointing, Tilting, Zooming - and not scene switching.
While the 2nd computer would be able to see the already aimed PTZ's and do the scene switching to feed the stream?
Would that work?
 
125 Views and no responses.
If this is the wrong place to ask, I'd sure appreciate being pointed elsewhere.
Or even some help on better describing my issue?
Thanks
 
SteveCC said:
Haven't gotten any leads yet but I've been thinking:
What if we had 2 computers, both running OBS and/or PTZ Control programs/Plugins.
Could both have access to the PTZ cameras?
Could one of them just do the PTZing - Pointing, Tilting, Zooming - and not scene switching.
While the 2nd computer would be able to see the already aimed PTZ's and do the scene switching to feed the stream?
Would that work?
Click to expand...
Probably.

I run a stream with two PTZ's, a phone, and an HDMI split/capture from the audience projection PC. The PTZ's have a network feed that is independent from the control, but I actually use their SDI outputs instead, to feed a 4-channel SDI capture card on the OBS machine. (actually, the audience projector gets converted to SDI as well, for the long distance to stage, and goes into the SDI capture card alongside the cameras)

PTZ control is from an app that I ended up writing myself, to run on a Raspberry Pi touchscreen, because none of what I found really worked for what I wanted to do. It's VISCA over UDP, which is two separate easy layers to look up and learn. Or if you'd rather have a managed connection with guaranteed (eventual) delivery, instead of just throwing a message out there and hoping it arrives (usually does, but UDP has no mechanism to guarantee it), then you could use TCP instead of UDP. A little bit more involved that way, but still not much. I did TCP, and the user interface was still the hard part by far!

My OBS doesn't know anything about PTZ controls. It just takes the picture.
 
Responding to a post that has since been deleted:

That sounds interesting. And easily a mess if it's not done right. If it *is* done right though, it could be a game changer for some rigs!

The one especially troublesome part that I see, that makes the rest seem trivial by comparison:
MouseMux said:
...someone remote could jump in and help when something breaks mid-stream...
Click to expand...
Generally, a streaming rig tends to be somewhat fragile, especially when already live, because things already tend to interact in ways that aren't always obvious. And a remote user doesn't normally exist for security reasons. So, suddenly adding that remote user could break even more things all by itself. For example, a network leg or some system resource might be almost saturated but works, and then the remote connection pushes it over the edge. Or some change in configuration somewhere (doesn't have to be obviously related) to allow the remote connection, also ends up killing the stream, etc.

Always test EVERYTHING before relying on it - every picky-ticular little thing, in the exact way that it's going to be used - so that you don't have surprises live. Adding a remote user is kind of a big deal. Great idea on paper, but in practice I'd call it more of a risk itself than the problem that it tries to solve. Unless the remote user already exists anyway - no need to add while panicked - and is included in the pre-show tests with plenty of time to troubleshoot, and in the show itself because that's how it was tested. Not just the possibility of one if they decide to connect, but an actual active one.
 
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Not sure if this helps, but we run a very similar two-person setup on a single PC: one person drives the PTZ cams (via VISCA/IP) while the other does scene switching in OBS. The trick that made it work for us was giving each operator their own mouse/keyboard with a separate cursor on the same Windows desktop (a tool called MouseMux does this) — so the switcher can grab their own cursor without ever yanking the PTZ operator's pointer mid-performance. No second computer, no network hops between the two operators, and we tested the full chain (both operators + capture + encoder) in rehearsal before the live show. Happy to share the exact setup if it's useful.
 
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