[Chad Pearson]

I only use my T420s for capturing and live streaming. All of my editing happens on an 8-core workstation (Sony Vegas). If the chipset is the same, a slightly slower processor won’t make a difference. The only time the processor gets high utilization is when I’m live streaming multiple streams (which means multiple h.264 encoding processes).

[Chad Pearson]

My T420s is a Core i5-2540M 2.6Ghz.

The important part though is the Sandy Bridge chipset. It was the first to support the 6Gbps bus speed, but was delayed by Intel and didn’t come out in time to make it into the T420 or T520, only the T420s

[Chad Pearson]

It is when you’re trying to switch both program and aux to the same source at the same time with one hand on keys 1 – 8 (for p/p), the other on push-to-talk for intercom (to call out the que), and the other on the audio mixer just-in-case the track wasn’t leveled properly.

Before anyone asks, the Aux (projector) isn’t tied to program because we sprinkle it with IMAG for broadcast / overflow locations, but don’t want that for the main stage.

[Chad Pearson]

I am using a Lenovo T420s with the Intensity Shuttle, and have done multiple hour long+ (longest was 3h 47m) live streams using FMLE.

I took the HD-SDI out of my video mixer into an HD-SDI -> HDMI converter and plugged that into my Intensity Shuttle. The UltraStudio *should* work just as well without the need for the converter

[Chad Pearson]

I’ve done a handfull of live streams now using the T420s with either a single stream at 480p x 1mbps and dual stream 640×360 550kbps + 256×188 100kbps and so far there haven’t been any glitches. The CPU stayed between 60-70% and there were no problems with the output on send or receiving end.

[Chad Pearson]

The model I got came with a SSD (Solid State Disk) which clocked 230MB/s+ on Disk Speed Test, which is enough for 10-bit uncompressed 1080i60 (though not 1080p60)

[Chad Pearson]

On the product page it says “Broadcast H.264 files live” does that mean it can stream H.264 to a streaming server (RTMP/RTSP) or CDN? If not, and all you get is a file on your hard drive when you’re done, how is that considered “live”?

Having an HD switcher with built-in streaming encoder for less than $1,000 would completely change the live streaming industry.

[Chad Pearson]

We currently do this today. We use an Intensity Shuttle hooked up to a Dell Optiplex 980 and stream it using Adobe FMLE to our CDN. We initially had a problem with the preview window open on FMLE causing dropped frames (probably a bug in the BM directshow driver), but once we turned off the preview window everything worked fine.

I’ve also tried it with Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Pro, but it suffered from the same ‘preview window’ bug and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off like I could with FMLE.

Since then BM’s documentation now says Dell’s are not supported, so if you don’t have one you shouldn’t have a problem.

[Chad Pearson]

If Media Express now only recognizes your DVR as 1080i 60 then that’s what your DVR is putting out. If you were getting 1080i 59.94 before, then someone/something changed the output resolution on your DVR. It could have been an OTA (over the air) DVR software update, or someone messing with your DVR output settings

[Chad Pearson]

I potentially have more information which may be of help.

Background: The Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder software (like many video capture applications) has 2 video preview windows so you can see the effect of whatever settings you apply alongside the original input stream.

While capturing (in my case to H.264) if you disable the “Input Video” preview window (the original stream) and just leave the “Output Video” (ie. compressed/resized stream) there is no sync or framerate issue even after 30 minutes. If you enable the “Input Video” window (whether by itself, or alongside the “Output” window) the video gets out of sync and the framerate starts to drop after only a minute or so.

However, while NOT capturing, the “Input Video” and “Output Video” are essentially one and the same (probably pulled from the same DirectShow buffer). So while NOT capturing having either the Input, Output (or BOTH) showing causes the sync/framerate issue.