NDI Bridge Bandwidth Usage

[jxs2151]

My configuration:
4 laptops outputting NDI feeds using a scene filter.
1 laptop intended to receive NDI feeds and aggregate them into a single, 4 tile scene for eventual streaming.

If I use the high bandwidth option on the receiving laptop, each feed adds about ~200 Mb/s in receive bandwidth on the receiving laptop. This looks correct.

In an attempt to not overwhelm my 1Gb/s network, I am trying to utilize NDI bridge to transcode local streams to NDI|HX. I expected to see lower bandwidth usage doing this, but I still see each feed adding the ~200 Mb/s as measured by Task Manager.

I assume this means that NDI bridge receives a high bandwidth NDI feed as a node and thus consumes the associated bandwidth of ~200 Mb/s. Is this correct? NDI bridge is acting as a node that consumes the full bandwidth before converting it to lower bandwidth HX?

 

[rockbottom]

Where are you running the bridge?

 

[jxs2151]

Where are you running the bridge?

The machine on which I am running the bridge sees the bandwidth usage. My usage isn't the standard 'bridge' usage, I am simply using it for the transcoding to lower-bandwidth HX protocol to try to eliminate the 200 Mb/s x 4 usage of standard NDI.

It doesn't look like this is going to do the trick.

 

[rockbottom]

The bridge needs to be running on the sending PC's, so you need 3 instances of the bridge running....

 

[jxs2151]

Ahhhh, let me try that. Thanks.

 

[rockbottom]

Yeah, running 1 instance won't work, NDI needs to be encoded to HX before it gets on the network.

 

[jxs2151]

So the bridge will take the local NDI feed without consuming bandwidth and then send out the HX signal?

 

[jxs2151]

Yeah, running 1 instance won't work, NDI needs to be encoded to HX before it gets on the network.

That makes perfect sense, frustrated that I did not think of that.

 

[rockbottom]

Yep.

Every laptop will need an Nvidia or Intel GPU to work with the bridge.

 

[jxs2151]

That gave me exactly the result that I was looking for, thank you very much for taking the time to help!

 

[rockbottom]

Cool! The bridge works real nice. I've streamed with it & it works as intended.

 

[jxs2151]

Yep.

Every laptop will need an Nvidia or Intel GPU to work with the bridge.

Got that covered.

 

[jxs2151]

The use case on this is a youth wrestling tournament, your help is going to allow out-of-state or even out-of-country grandmothers, aunts, uncles, etc. to watch their family's kids wrestle.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Am I guessing correctly that you are using 4 laptops to get 4 USB webcams closer to the action?
beware typical webcams that are either fixed-focus, or focus at most out to 6-10 ft (a completely reasonable thing for a webcam)... which means soft-focus beyond that... so you'll probably get mediocre at best video quality

1. though well outside the spec, with the right USB cables and cameras, you can get decently long USB cables (takes some testing, so be sure to be able to return items that don't work for you)... whether that would work for you depends on specific layout considerations

out of curiosity, are the 4 laptops covering 4 separate viewing areas, or separate angles/perspectives for same 'stage'?

 

[jxs2151]

Yes, 4 laptops with 4 USB cams...I per mat.

We already live stream the individual mats to YT using this setup. What I am trying to do, in addition to each individual mat stream, is have another YT Live stream that shows all 4 mats in a tiled screen so that viewers can watch all 4 mats at the same time. Not how I would want to watch wrestling, but viewers have asked for it. I needed a way to bring the individual mats to a streaming laptop without saturating my network with 200 Mb/s per NDI feed. Rockbottom's advice does exactly that.

I am using the Anker C300 webcams, the only camera I could find that does 1080p60 with the 115 degree viewing angle needed to get the whole mat in the frame from a camera near the mat. It looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/live/46prTa4Mypo?si=7ovzGZtIBIoaa-B2&t=3224