Powering our first virtual event: CommCon Virtual 2021
The last few months of 2021 have been very busy for Broadcaster.VC. Soon after announcing our Release Candidate, we added some cool new features (including WHIP and our collaboration with Subspace) and we ended the year with a bang by supporting CommCon Virtual 2021!
We are very proud that CommCon chose Broadcaster.VC to power the event. Indeed, all the content for the conference was created via Broadcaster.VC! Talks were recorded in advance via our platform. Each speaker joined a room with the CommCon organisers and AV team during their scheduled recording slot. The organisers created a room for each slot, so that any participant could test their link in advance without the risk of disturbing an ongoing recording session. Inside the room, speakers could simply share their video and audio streams (webcams, mics and screens) and start their talk: Everything was live edited by the video engineer while recording so the talk was immediately ready for prime time!
We're especially proud of how Broadcaster.VC doesn't limit participants to one webcam and one screenshare, but enables them to share multiple videos and windows at the same time. This works like a charm for live demos: Watch Tim Panton switch from his slides to his IDE without the typical fumbling through screens and windows.
The video and audio streams in the Broadcaster.VC room are available via NDI in the AV engineer's workstation, in this case using vMix. They are all delivered separately and in sync, so it's easy to live edit the show while recording.
This allows multiple people, such as other speakers, organisers, MCs etc. to be present in the room during the recording session, while only the relevant audio and video streams are included in the cut.
Video streams are always delivered at the quality specified in the room's settings. During CommCon 2021, most rooms were set to 720p. However, to test the full capabilities of our product, Dan's introductory talk was shot on a 4K camera in a room set for 4K video. This way, the full resolution stream was readily available in vMix, allowing a recording with no compromise on quality.
During the event, every pre-recorded talk was followed by a live Q&A session. These were powered by Broadcaster.VC as well, with all speakers joining the room and sharing their videos. As with all recording sessions, the content was available via NDI in the video engineer's workstation, to be live edited and streamed directly.
If you'd like to learn more about how this was done, Dan gave a talk at the event where he showed how Broadcaster.VC was used throughout the week of recordings and demonstrated how quick and easy it is to import multiple camera angles into the video production station.
CommCon Virtual 2021 was the first true test of Broadcaster.VC's capabilities and we're very happy with the results and the feedback we received. Everything worked perfectly 99% of the time, and we're now hard at work at nailing down the few shortcomings.
We believe there is a strong need in the video production industry for more power and flexibility in bringing remote participants into the production workflow, and we're confident that Broadcaster.VC can be the answer professionals are looking for.
If you're planning a remote or hybrid event, why not give us a shout to learn how we can help?