View NDI video on a ChromeBook?

M

michof_d219

Member
Hi, all —

Setting up a theatrical video assist here at the school. Planning to hide a PTZ cam in the orchestra pit, aimed at the conductor, so cast backstage and in the green room can watch for cues. We have far more ChromeBooks available to us than Windows or Mac devices for placement backstage, but AFAIK there's no equivalent to the NDI Monitor program for ChromeBooks... or is there?
Thanks in advance for any info on a quick fix for this. I got the call over the weekend that the director wants this first thing Monday morning (today).

— Mike
 
I've never tried it, but this tool might work. Says it will flip NDI into a web stream that a laptop/Chromebook, tablet or mobile device should be able to pick up using a web browser.

You would need a Windows system to run this software on.

garaninapps.com

SecondStream PRO

garaninapps.com garaninapps.com
 
Thank you, as always, Kane!

Okay... making that work — for the moment — isn't something I can wrap my head around right now. But now I have new issues.

I pulled two MacBook Airs out of storage to set up backstage, and put them on wired network. In fact, they're patched into the same switch as our camera. Same VLAN. Literally patched next to the camera in our wiring closet. But when I launch those laptops, the only see two of my balcony cameras... not the one I really need them to see, which is patched into the orchestra pit, aimed at the conductor. That cam comes through just fine on my Mac in my office, but absolutely doesn't even appear in the list of choices on the laptops.

They're all on the same VLAN. They're all right in our auditorium. The only two devices that can't see Cam #4 are the two devices that absolutely need to see Cam #4.

I tried quitting NDI Video Monitor at my office Mac in case the cam needed to be freed up, somehow.
I unplugged/replugged the POE data cable to Cam #4. It rebooted, and the laptops backstage still won't see it. The Mac in my office sees it.
They're all the same model, NewTek PTZ 2nd-generation. All settings are the same, AFAIK. They all have fixed IP addresses and no collisions; they're all sequentially numbered.

So the big question is, WHY CAN'T LAPTOPS ON THE SAME VLAN SEE THIS ONE SPECIFIC CAMERA?
A secondary question is, can multiple devices connect to a single camera, as I'm trying to do here? Ideally, two laptops — one on either side of the state — viewing a single camera in the orchestra pit, aimed at the conductor.

I'm losing my mind and we're in production week. (For those who wonder why I waited so long to set this up, well... I was only asked over the weekend to do this in the first place.)

Help, please!

— Mike
 
Swapped out a Spark (4K model, for the record, because POE) along with an older HDMI pro camera, in place of the PTZ camera. One laptop saw the Spark. Nothing else does.

ETA: Eventually I got both backstage laptops to see the Spark but it's choppy. I can't get the camera down smaller than 1920 x 1080 so I might try to find a camera that can do 720. Who'd have thought we'd get back to a point where lower res would be desirable? The only other cameras I found quickly enough have mini HDMI ports and I can only find fullsize or micro-HDMI, so for now I'm stuck with 1920 and a slow feed. Timing is important for the cast backstage so I want to try to mitigate the strobing.
 
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Could NDI groups be configured or is anything using Discovery Server? Both of those would cause them not to appear.

In the Settings menu of NDI Video Monitor is a Low Bandwidth option which will pull a lower resolution version of the NDI source which will use less bandwidth.
 
And yes, sources can run out of bandwidth. Each viewer will be another "flow" coming out of the camera unless you enable multicast. Dante uses the same concepts, the little AVIO devices can only have 2 flows before they run out of processor to support more unless you flip them into multicast.

I didn't remember that you can manually pull the "preview" stream from the sources. That would get the stream down to under 40mbps? Trying to remember what I was seeing at my switch for cameras that are not on program, preview, or recording.

Are the cable runs very long and are all devices really operating at gigabit? 1080/60p on NDI HB (full NDI) is around 140mbps per stream, so if you had 100mbps connections, things would be less than ideal. Are the cables really in good working order?

Are the Macbook Air Intel or M series processor? Just wondering if it could be a processor issue.
 
It took a lot of begging and pleading with my hardware, but somehow things finally came together. The final setup is that I found a way to dumb my camera down to 480i, HDMI into the Spark IO, and view on the two MBAirs. I don't recall which revision they are, but they're a few years old.

When I first got them to "see" the Spark, the video was very choppy. Going into the HTML admin screen for the Spark, I saw that it was pushing out 1920 x 1080, and the camera wouldn't do HD at any other rate. I found a menu option to go between HD and SD, so I decided to try SD. That worked, and the motion became smooth (it's important that, low-res or otherwise, the cast can see the conductor's hands and read her lips since she's mouthing the words along with the actors onstage. In that sense, mission accomplished.

Thank you for your input!

— Mike
 
For the future, you might think about some cheap Windows laptops for this. There is a Chuwi branded one that I've been using that you can get for $300. It's actually a tablet with keyboard which might work out better for you. It's the 12 inch UBook X with Intel i5-10210Y which is enough for Studio Monitor to run. Looks like the price is up to $369usd, but look around and you might catch them for less, they have an official store on ebay which was cheaper by at least $50 over Amazon when I bought mine. I think this is the cheapest tablet/laptop that will do what you need. [edit] the above Chuwi really needs a power pass usb C to ethernet device, the power cord that comes with it is a very small barrel jack, or easy to snap off when you really need it power jack [end of edit]


If you want a computer and monitor set up, I recommend the Mele Quieter 3Q with n5105 processor, I've used this to encode USB cameras into NDI streams at 1080/60p. Works better if you glue heatsinks to the case and little USB fans to help with the heat. If you can get newer/faster versions of similar computers, that would also be good. The Intel J4105 is right on the ragged edge for working, you will see 95+ percent processor to encode the same camera, a bit less to play back NDI, I think the J4125 would be similar, but these older computers can be had for around $150 which puts it back into the realm for maybe. Just stay clear of Ace Magic or Ace Magician brands, do a quick youtube search for reference and go back from 5 days ago to about 6 months ago.
 
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