vMix Cloud and Other Indispensable Cloud Production Tools
What are some of the essential cloud-based tools for live production workflows? Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Chair, Streaming Media Conferences, and CMO, id3as, talks with Corey Behnke, Producer & Co-Founder, LiveX, and John Porterfield, Webcast Producer, Social180Group, about vMix cloud and other indispensable cloud production tools that their organizations use.
Schumacher-Rasmussen begins by asking Behnke what specific tools he finds most useful for cloud workflows.
“vMix in the cloud is probably one of the best,” Behnke says. “I was a Product Manager for Livestream Studio in 2014 and ’15, and I was like, ‘vMix, what is this whole vMix thing that Teradek was using at NAB?” He emphasizes that vMix is now an essential tool for LiveX. “We have a hardware product called Production Bot that vMix runs off,” he says. “We sell maybe five to 10 boxes a month, and to all kinds of clients, Fox and whatever. And the adoption of vMix over the last two years has been incredible. It's probably been the number one software for broadcasting as far as adoption from professional broadcasters to streamers, where we've seen streamers adopt it heavily. And then broadcasters adopting it…and where they've met [in the middle] is in the cloud. So we use a lot of vMix in the cloud.”
Behnke gets into more detail about the tools LiveX uses for its products. “Virtual Video Control Room, our software that we built for the DNC that runs on AWS, that really is a broadcast router,” he says. “It's similar to Sienna NDI.” However, he notes some issues with Sienna NDI. “Our problem with Sienna NDI is that you needed an engineer to run it. It's a great software product, but it gets you into this alleyway of, like, wow, I only can have a very dedicated, very ‘nerdy’ engineer run it, right? And so we created Virtual Video Control Room off of Nimble Streamer to get multi-view, to get streams, to get destinations to do just simple things, and then get NDI into the cloud. That should be a very simple thing for people to be able to do. If I could solve the communications piece, we've solved all the other things with this product with those two pieces where you can do anything. There's nothing that you can't do. And it's pretty scalable as far as all kinds of projects.”
John Porterfield of Social180Group says, “I'll give a shout-out to Corey and his team. They've done a fantastic job in what they've developed, and I think there are a lot of great tools. There are a lot of great solutions that are coming into a place where we can then test and validate, making sure that things all work. But I think, coming from an operator perspective -- that's me. I need to ensure everything's working [and that] I understand it. I'm not a coder. My job is to make sure that I deliver on that as a webcast producer and operator. So I think everything that we look at is always looking at the bigger picture.”
Learn more about cloud production tools at Streaming Media East 2023.
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