I'm wondering about trying to live stream a music festival at some point in the future. Just before Christmas I bought an irig stream to allow me to use a mobile phone or webcam whilst taking high quality audio straight from the FOH mixer and this worked really well but I'm wondering about taking it up another level.. I would like better video quality and to be able to move around the festival with the camera for a more immersive viewing experience.
I'm very confident with the audio side of things but have little experience with cameras or TV. I'd like the stream to look as professional as possible and not just look like a 5 minute bodge job, but I appreciate it will cost money to get it right.
For reference, here's the streamed gig we did just before christmas (which was very much a 5 min bodge job!):
I think the audio quality was good however there was nobody mixing the sound during the gig so the levels were a bit off. We were all spaced out in the room due to covid but im imagining the next stream would look more like a normal gig on a stage, COVID permitting.
So my main questions are:
- What's the most cost effective way to get a fully mobile camera setup which can move around a festival?
- Could a gopro be used to stream the video and then synced up to the audio, or would latency between video and audio cause problems? (I've heard that gopro's can do this but I've never used one)
- Is hiring in pro equipment an option?
- Would it be worth the additional cost compared to just using a mobile phone with the irig?
Thanks!
Comments
Video wise we used Sony's special streaming software which enables video mixing remotely from multiple sources. So we had one master phone at the front filming the band and that phone got the good audio.
We all set up our own phones as personal cameras and streamed to the Sony software using the Larix ap
Then our normal lighting engineer video mixed the gig from a laptop using video from all the phones in real time. while our sound engineer mixed in on cans using our normal QU16 mixer.
I think I showed you this before but in case I didn't this is what was streamed
https://www.facebook.com/superheroes.rock/videos/1691931117650240.
It was all done on 4G, no wifi .... the drummers phone was an older android phone and that struggled but the keyboard players newer Samsung was fine as were all the iPhones
@maltingsaudio thanks for that. That'll definitely be out of budget so what would you say is the next best thing?
I've been looking into gopro's as some of the newer models can do live streaming in relatively good quality and also have an audio input which would allow me to connect a battery powered mixer to handle a few mics and and a feed from the FOH when required.
This seems the most cost effective way so far.. It'd be £300-400 for a GoPro and about £100 for a decent battery mixer. I'm yet to decide whether the improvement from a mobile phone and irig stream is worth that cost though.
Yeah a static mix with a heavier sound will be fine as generally the 2 guitars and bass will be consistent. With us lot there's horn parts played on the keys and a fair bit of clean guitar and backing vox so generally needs a fair bit of levelling.
If everyone has an ears mix then you can generally put a compressor on the main bus of the desk before the audio leaves to make it sit loud and steady like program music.
Switching cameras is the hard bit, what's needed is a cheap alternative to the Sony software because that's around £120 an hour to hire, we only used it because our keyboard player is on the development team and had a load of test hours.
EDIT to add - you can also take a feed from an audio interface in to OBS so can hook up a mixer that way for your audio too.