REMI Production with LiveU LU800-PRO4 and LiveU Studio
This article will highlight the features of LiveU’s LU800-PRO mobile unit and how it can be used for REMI lightweight production, webcasting, online interviews, and multi-camera streaming productions. You’ll learn how to get up and running with the LU800-PRO and how to use it for production with LiveU Studio 2.0. You’ll also learn how to create channels, add media and live-streaming inputs, and configure multicam streams.
About the LU800-PRO
The LU800-PRO is an encoder that enables multicam production, but the device also serves as a production-level field unit. It’s designed for live news and dynamic sports coverage; however, it can also support online interviews for television programs, podcasts, and other streaming video productions. Additionally, the LU800-PRO provides the ability to utilize remote production (REMI). Your devices can be out in the field or on location while you produce and direct the project from a central control room or broadcast facility.
At first glance, it appears that the LU800 PRO is just a high-end encoder, but it’s actually much more than that. It’s a complete remote production unit that can be used for high-quality, complex productions out in the field or on location.
Key features on the portable LU800-PRO unit include the following:
- Eight 5G modems with high-efficiency internal antennas
- 4xSDI (12G/3G/HD/SD) inputs
- H.265/HEVC and H.264 encoding
- Up to eight audio channels
- Up to 60Mbps
The LU800-PRO supports the following encoding formats:
- 4Kp50/60/25/30/24
- 1080p50/60/25/30/24
- 1080i50/60
- 720p50/60/25/30
- PAL, NTSC
For this article, I used the LU800-PRO with the PRO4 software upgrade (Figure 1).
Figure 1. LiveU LU800-PRO4
The LU800-PRO can provide lightweight productions and can be utilized alongside LiveU Studio to create enhanced, remote, multi-camera production events. With LiveU Studio, users can distribute their live streams to up to 30 destinations (publishing points) using LiveU’s proprietary LiveU Reliable Transport (LRT) technology.
Using the LU800-PRO is straightforward. What really makes it come alive is LiveU Studio, a full production tool available in the cloud that you can use to connect to other LiveU devices, start live streams, create lower-thirds, add elements for production, and perform many other tasks.
Creating a LiveU Studio Project
To access LiveU Studio, log in to LiveU Central, and click the Studio button. This will open LiveU Studio. To begin using it, you’ll need to create a project (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Creating a project in LiveU Studio
Clicking the blue Create button will start your new project.
A project has all of the features, settings, and inputs for a particular type of production stored with that project. For example, I could have a project designed specifically for the weekly webcast productions we do at Ohio State University using three webcams for the host and two guests. Whenever I open that project in LiveU Studio, I could open it using the previous configuration I had before for webcams, media, and even media players to play videos. So there is very little setup required if you’re consistently doing the same types of projects.
In Figure 2, you can see two projects created: SM Article Testing and Webcast and Talk Show. To create each project, I clicked the + button and entered my project name in the text box that appeared.
Figure 3 shows how the interface looks inside a new project. To begin configuring your various inputs, media, and elements for production, for the first time in a project you need to create a new live stream by clicking the blue Create New Live Stream button at the top of the page. You can also click the orange Create New Live Now button on the date and time you would like to start your stream.
Figure 3. Creating a new live stream
The screen you see in Figure 4 is LiveU Studio’s Visual Mixer, which appears when your live stream is started for the first time. As you’ll notice, it looks very much like a video switcher, with Preview and Program windows. It also includes layers where you can add different inputs, a section for hotkeys, and a section on the bottom-left navigation where you can configure and fine-tune various items. You can also add layers and customize inputs in the Visual Mixer. In addition, you can tweak publishing points, segments, hotkeys, lower-thirds, guests, and audio volume.
Figure 4. Starting LiveU Studio
Producing an Interview Webcast
To test LiveU Studio, I recorded an online interview for a webcast. I wanted to be able to have two side-by-side webcams included in the Visual Mixer, with a full-page graphic that appears behind both webcams. With LiveU Studio, the first step is to select or create a template you can use, and then you add the sources to the template. To do this, you click the + button highlighted with the white circle in Figure 4.
Where Add An Input appears at the top of Figure 5, you can see the various inputs available. There are options for live sources, media players, images, text, HTML overlays, templates, applications, and live source history. Since I needed a template, I clicked on the Template button.
Figure 5. Adding inputs in LiveU Studio from the Visual Mixer
In Figure 6, you can see some of the options that appear for templates. For my project, I chose two side-by-side boxes with a background behind them. My selection is highlighted in Figure 6 with a white box around it.
Figure 6. Adding a template
To select a template, click the Add button. For my webcast project, I added a webcam for the guest by going to Live Source on inputs and clicking the Invite button for “Webcam, screen sharing, invite guest, phone.” The option is highlighted with a white box in Figure 5. In Figure 7, you can see what the invite looks like. You can copy the string shown in Figure 7 or click the email or text options to send it to the person joining.
Figure 7. An invite for adding webcams
The next step is for your guest to accept the invite and join the webcast. Since I was the host, I had to also add a webcam for myself to be able to talk to the guest and appear in the video. After I added another webcam, I joined the session as the host. I could then automatically talk to and hear the guest.
Once we both had joined the session with our webcams, we could hear and talk to each other. The next step was to add the webcams to the desired location in the template. In Figure 8 you can see the template I chose as it appears in the Visual Mixer with two boxes side by side. It’s the second box from the left on the bottom row of the Visual Mixer. Notice that what appears in the template matches what you see on the Preview and Program windows. The two webcams used for the shot are surrounded by a white box. Notice that one is labeled Figgy 2, and the other is labeled Derrick 3. Keep those two names in mind for what I explain next.
Figure 8. Our webcams added to a template in the Visual Mixer
Navigating to the template and clicking Edit (the pencil icon) allows you to add camera sources to the desired location using the dialog shown in Figure 9. Notice that Input 1 (Figgy 2) is highlighted in orange in the template and is on the left. To add my webcam as Input 2, I selected “Derrick 3 – web cam” from the drop-down menu. That’s how to add your sources to a template.
Figure 9. How to select cameras in a template
Edward Gilliard, best known as “Figgy Fig,” is a media personality/producer for In the Loop on SportsRadio 610 in Houston. He was gracious enough to assist me with testing LiveU Studio a day before having to travel to New Orleans to cover Super Bowl LIX. In his business, they could utilize a product like the LU800-PRO to gather coverage out in the field and to publish their streams to a variety of streaming platforms.
Adding LRT Streams
If you’re interested in multicam production, you can use LRT streams created in LiveU Studio to work with the LU800-PRO. You’ll need to navigate to the Visual Mixer to add an LRT channel that you can use for streaming with the LRT technology.
Figure 10 shows how you can select a channel. The channel you pick will be tied to your input added in LiveU Studio. You’ll need to remember which channel you used to configure your video inputs. Keep in mind that you can’t perform streaming on the LU800-PRO without creating channels.
Figure 10. Adding LRT live streams in LiveU Studio
Managing Live Streams in LiveU Central
Once you create a channel, you can log in to LiveU Central to manage live streams on the LU800-PRO. You can start a channel by choosing one from the Channel drop-down menu and clicking the Start button shown in Figure 11. Note that you’ll need to be in Publishing mode in LiveU Studio to see your cameras. To launch a single channel, select your stream from the drop-down menu and pick Start.
Figure 11. Starting a single channel
There’s a different process if you’re interested in streaming to multiple channels. To do so, first add your channels in LiveU Studio, and then start them in LiveU Central. Navigate to the Multi-HQ tab, and turn on Custom channels as shown in Figure 12. Then, click the Start button. Your channels and cameras will then appear in LiveU Studio.
Figure 12. Starting multiple channels
There are great inputs available in LiveU Studio to make your productions come alive. Producers who are looking to stream with multicam in the cloud could develop some interesting streaming productions using the LU800-PRO and LiveU Studio. There are so many features available within the LU800-PRO and LiveU Studio that you could be overwhelmed (in a good way) by of all the possibilities.
Closing Thoughts
You can stream to many different protocols by push or pull using the LU800-PRO and LiveU Studio. Keep in mind that you can add all types of media, including videos, lower-thirds with alpha channels, and other graphics.
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