NDI Input

[D1gits]

I've sold all my thunderbolt capture cards to switch my camera inputs from SDI to NDI... with some huge benefits!

1) It is much faster than a physical live input card. (No more big latency from interactive computers and potentially cameras.)
2) It is resolution and frame rate agnostic! Meaning you can send any custom resolutions at any FPS. (no more limited by conventional formats.)
3) There are cameras, switchers and converters (NDI to physical ins or outs) that exists already. This means again you can have cameras feeds with almost no latency coming in.
4) It supports stream WITH Alpha and without alpha.
5) It's been integrated into at least: Resolume, Watchout, d3, Touch Designer, WISIWYG, Mad mapper (and Isadora soon)
6) You can share the video stream to many programs at the same time! This was the big deal breaker for me.

I know there is a NDI to Syphon app but Id love to see native support for NDI input in Magic...

ps And native output for Mac would be lovely to ; )

[Terry Payman]

+1 for this.
Very interesting to hear about the reduced latency.

EDIT: What camera(s) are you using to give the reduced latency?

[D1gits]

Hey Terry!

At the moment we are using two Blackmagic Design cameras. One 4k and one HD stream. And compared to SDI its less lagg with NDI solution, than going to a SDI switch (making it possible to have multiple programs using the same camera feed) and from the switch, splitting and routing the feed to a 4k and HD Capture card.

All the best.

[Terry Payman]

Hey D1gits!
Many thanks for the info.

I must check out the Blackmagic cameras. I'm very tempted to get a Blackmagic 4k or the new 6k camera for my stills photography - shooting short RAW video clips rather than my current method of a burst of shots. Good if the same camera could double up for use in my interactive visuals.

I didn't notice NDI output on Blackmagic cameras - are you converting their SDI output to an NDI stream using NewTek NDI Connect?

All the best.

[D1gits]

I bought the Magewell Pro Converter HDMI TX and the Pro Converter HDMI 4K Plus. I bought the HDMI versions to have other camera options in the future... But Magewell converters work like a charm : ) They even double up as a network device over usb.

/D1gits

[Terry Payman]

Thanks D1gits
Very interesting - I must check these out.

My memory is bad, but on a hunch I searched the Magic forum for "NDI" and found lots, along with previous +1's from myself for a NDI input module!

The following in particular looked very promising. It seems that the module you want may have already been written for Magic by leadedge (I'm not sure if it's Windows only). From my reading of various posts, I understand that there's a NDI to Spout module in the distribution along with the "Spout to NDI" module.

https://magicmusicvisuals.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1756&p=8464&hilit=ndi#p8464

http://spout.zeal.co/download-spout-to-ndi/

[D1gits]

Yes Terry. I checked the forum as well and found the threads you mentioned. But Spout is Win only right? Im on a Mac, so Im still in need of the good hands of Eric and crew... The future will tell : )

Im on the NDI train anyway

[leadedge]

FYI. Code and binaries for the NDI modules for Windows are now on GitHub (https://github.com/leadedge/MagicNDI). I will be removing them from SpoutToNDI.

Eric has listed them on the resources page (https://magicmusicvisuals.com/resources).

I can't help with the Mac I am afraid.

[leadedge]

But I forgot - this might help you :

https://docs.vidvox.net/freebies_ndi_syphon.html