video over internet

[Chris Young]

Tricky one Kevin! If I understand your requirement correctly I don’t know of anything that is going to give you full video/audio bandwith over the net with minimal delay that is going to give you a quality feed to switch with other cameras. From your question I gather this camera feed is going to be switched with others at the output end, correct?

Couple of questions. You may know all this in which case all that follows is redundant. Is this remote cam at a venue, sporting facility, conference centre, large hotel or something like that? If it is most of those sorts of venues have ‘head ends’, video and audio feed points. These are full bandwidth fibre optic lines that allow for camera and OB feeds to networks or to wherever there is another head end. Usually in a case like this we find the nearest head end feed point run our AV cables through a proc-amp into the feed point. Check and adjust levels then book the time slot required with our Telecomms provider and get their TOC (television operations centre) to patch it through to the point where we are taking the AV feed from. This then goes to a framestore sync unit which is genlocked to the BB generator at the production point where you are running your switch from and then the signal is timed into the vision switcher and treated just like any other camera during the switch.

The current versions of Windows Media Encoder can take a live feed from a camera or switch and feed a high quality signal to the net to a designated server IP address for IP streaming of a WMV encoded stream but it’s not something you could use in a switch. There are other proprietry hardware systems that can do the same to the net but again not giving you a full bandwidth feed for what you want to do.

If you do discover anything that can do it post back.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Kevin Mccarthy]

Chris, the camera in question will be at an outdoor sporting event. Unfortunately the “perfect” location is about 3/4 of a mile away, on the other side of a hill with trees & houses in between. We have tried a 2ghz & 17ghz microwave and they can’t cut through. We don’t need audio but we do need video. This is for a live cable tv show. the qualty doesn’t have to be exquisite but should be at least VHS quality. The biggest issue will be delay. A shot from this camera can’t be 2 or 3 seconds later than the other cameras. Thanks for your help. I relaze this is off-topicc but I know everyone here has some great experoence & ideas. Thanks again.
Kevin

[Chris Young]

Hmm! Can you use a combo of one of your micro links plus cable for some of the way, or can you cable the distance? Either way you could use something like the Kramer line drivers which can push a composite video signal, if that’s what you are sourcing from, up to a 1000 meters at close to broadcast. These require mains power or you can run them off a 12v/120v inverter. If not they have other units that can be 12v powered and can drive up to 500 metres, these could be used in series at a push. All units have line gain and eq adjustments so you can just hang a WFM and Vector scope off the downstream end and adjust for correct levels. The best thing with these is that they do this by using cheap Cat 5 unshielded twisted pair telephone cabling between the TX and RX units. Small, quick and easy to use and keenly priced. I have used the smaller 12v units and the signal quality is very good for the distances involved. The typical delay is around 1 microsecond per 100 metres so on a 1000 metre run you are going to loose around 10 microseconds which is, if you in NTSC, about 1/6 of a TV scan line, negligible in other words, easily compensated for with timing at the receive end. The units to look at are the TP-1xl and TP-2xl which are the mains units and the 704 and 705 12v units. Made in Israel but have a US distributor. The mains units are here:

https://www.kramerelectronics.com/indexes/item.asp?desc=108

and the 12v units are here:

https://www.kramerelectronics.com/indexes/item.asp?desc=36

There are various other brands of twisted pair interfaces around but can only speak from experience on these Kramer boxes. At the high end you have the Telecast Copperhead fibre optic units which you may be able to hire, go for miles those babies. Other than that it’s a chopper microwave link, phew! Expensive! Good luck.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney