How to live stream a concert?

Getting started with a live stream production

You have seen live concerts and you ask yourself how you can do this by yourself? Well, our team has done this several times and here is one of their live streaming stories.

Start off with an idea

Ben Hammer, from the cologne artist collective Chips & Champagner teamed up with Boinx’s Head of Marketing, Steffen Skopp, to stream a concert of a german newcomer band called KLAN. The concert was planned to take place during the Cologne co/pop festival live 2019.
Because mimoLive is an easy and lightweight video streaming solution, Ben and Steffen thought it would be a great idea to give it a try. Ben focused on the management of the team and the event, while Steffen took the responsibility to get the equipment and the live stream tech team.

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A special location under an old railway bridge

The team had to face two main issues. They started to discuss which cameras to use and finally they chose two PTZ dome cameras for the stage, two handheld cameras left and right of the stage, one fixed camera from the back for the complete observation of the stage. Additionally two iPhones to get some impression from inside the audience.

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View outside the CBE – a busy train track runs over the roof this event location. Not the best circumstances to use radio transmitter.

The venue CBE in Cologne is an old railway station which is made out of thick walls of stones. On the roof of the venue, there is a busy railway track which lots of close distance trails for the commuters working in the city. The team marked the circumstances as a risk for using radio transmitter for the video signals.

The next main headache for Ben and Steffen begun when they received the schedule of the slot for the band. KLAN was scheduled first to play on stage, which set the time for tear down the equipment and clear the stage to 60 minutes. Because of the short timing for tear down, they wanted to use radio transmitter instead of long SDI for the cameras. But there was this risk of interfering signals from the trains and their magnetic fields.

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Henning filming with the handheld Sony camera on the left side of the stage.

In the end the decided to use a mix of SDI and NDI™ cameras and utilizing iPhones via a private WiFi network. They even used two TeraDek transmitter the send the SDI signals from the stage to the video mixing Mac. The resulting video met the high standards of the band’s record label, Warner Music Group. Only in some scenes you see video noise caused by the interfering signals of the near train station.

Camera setup for a concert

3x SDI cameras,
2x NDI cameras,
1x iPhones via mimoCall,

In order to stream to two destinations at once and save a recording to disk in FullHD 1080p30, the team decided to use a 10-core iMac Pro which turned out to provide much more power than was actually needed.

Two of the SDI cameras where handheld operated by experienced camera operators. These cameras where hooked up via the TeraDek wireless SDI transmitter, allowing for free movement in front of the stage.
One BlackMagic SDI camera was mounted in the back of the venue to provide a wide angle shot. Two remotely operated Lumens NDI PTZ cameras where positioned on the stage to provide close ups of the musicians and a reverse view of the audience.

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The mimoLive setup

Multiple different camera views were stored in the presets and allowed the director a broad choice of images. To capture the emotion of the audience, two team members where using their iPhones in the crowd wirelessly via mimoCall. A separate sound mix was provided for the live stream from a secondary mixing board via stereo XLR into a Zoom H5 digital audio interface. The director used an iPad with a mimoLive Remote Control Surface to operate mimoLive with a single touch of his fingers.

Challenges and Learnings

It was impossible for team to install cables from the video booth to the stage because of time constraints for set up and tear down. Since NDI® is a network protocol, and since multiple video signals can be send over a single LAN connection, bringing the two NDI cameras on stage online were simple. Fortunately, there was an existing LAN cable connection from the director’s area to the stage.
The team chose to use Teradek Bolt transmitters for the other two SDI stage camera.

Video and Sound Quality

For the outgoing uplink to the internet, the stream bandwidth was limited to 1500 bps by mimoLive to secure a stable streaming connection. The team chose stability over quality. mimoLive allows a very precise limiting of the uplink streams to Facebook and YouTube.
Typically the first audio mixer optimizes the sound quality to the room and for the audience. Because these settings are not great for listing outside the room, the team had a second audio mixer. He optimized the sound quality only for the stream. It is a good idea if you can afford to hire a second audio engineer.

Equipment List

  • Apple iMac Pro (27-inch with Retina 5K Display, 3.0GHz 10-core Intel Xeon W, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Radeon Pro Vega 64)
  • mimoLive™ – Video switcher software for Mac
  • Blackmagic Design DeckLink Duo 2 SDI card
  • Sonnet Echo Express SE1 TB3 PCIe Expansion Box
  • Apple iPad
  • 2x Apple iPhone 8+
  • 2x Lumens VC-A50PN NDI Camera (PTZ Cameras on stage)
  • 2x Sony PXW-X70 Camera (Shoulder cameras left / right in front of stage)
  • Blackmagic Micro Studio Camera (Extreme long shot from the directors point of view)
  • TeraDek Bolt Pro500 (Wireless transmitter)
  • TeraDek Bolt Pro300 (Wireless transmitter)
  • Zoom H5 Handy Recorder
  • Ubiquiti Networks 8-Port UniFi Switch

Credits

KLAN – Stefan & Michael Heinrich, Joël Fonsegrive, Carlo Caduff
Live Sound – David Trapp
Broadcast Sound – Beray Habip
Director – Marcus Nitschke
Camera – Henning Frosch, Johnny Brungs
Production – Ben Hammer, Steffen Skopp, Laura Giltjes
Production Assistance – Johanna Keuser, Sonja Hegel
Tech Support Live Stream – Oliver Breidenbach
Video Documentation and Cut – Tobias Witzgall