When last we left you, we had built up some streaming ability with 2 cameras using what we had laying around. And for a start, it worked really well. But ever the perfectionist, Eric wanted better. Better quality, better connectivity, better production.
So, what can you do to improve, without draining your bank account? Well, eBay has LOTS of options. We decided to go with some old Blackmagic Designs PCIe cards, the Decklink SDI. This is the original PCIe version, so its from 2008, but when you’re streaming to Facebook, you don’t need 4k capability. The single channel version of the card runs about $50-100 on eBay and you can put as many in your computer as you have open PCIe slots.
We already had Blackmagic HDMI to SDI Microconverters and SDI cable, so the next step was cameras. Eric’s wife Rebecca had a Sony Handycam with an HDMI out. Done. Now, we need more Handycams. Off to eBay we go! We still used the Canon XL1. It works well enough to be a static wide shot. Once we have more SDI inputs available in the computer, we’ll upgrade the wide shot, and add another static close camera, for the Lector.
