Teradek VidiU Go and Core Make the Perfect Streaming Bundle for Remote Newscasts
While remote learning was a first for many teachers this year, shooting newscasts remotely is routine for student video production teams. When there’s breaking news at school, your news team has to rush to the area. There’s seldom time to set up a whole production system, and you can rarely count on a reliable internet connection. That’s where the Teradek VidiU Go and Core come in.
Catawba Ridge High School has a student newscast based solely on social media. This is exactly the kind of flexible and reliable streaming solution that will add breaking news to their reporting queue. According to program director Karin McKemey, the students record their segments ahead of time and post to social media every morning. Having a streaming encoder that can deliver video to any number of online destinations and maintain a steady internet connection from anywhere is a game-changer.
“The fun of social media is that it is so in the moment. We were definitely lacking the ability to post in real-time especially from places like the football field to give live updates, and I definitely see more people tuning in to events from home, especially now,” Karin said.
VidiU Go is an H.264 / HEVC encoder capable of streaming HD video to any social media platform or RTMP(S) destination. Right out of the box, it takes just a couple minutes to configure the encoder to stream to your desired destination.
“Instead of just a quick sideline update that we post to Instagram and Twitter, our reporters can bring in another camera view; something that no one else is really doing. The fact that it is so tiny and portable means we can take it anywhere,” Karin said. “When I think about all the heavy cables we used to run in our stadium to get to our big switcher on game days; all that equipment and now we can literally go anywhere and do a live report.”
VidiU Go can fit into virtually any production workflow, no matter where you’re streaming. Many encoders limit your streams by requiring a wired connection. VidiU Go is different. It has the option to use ethernet, wifi, or 3G / 4G / LTE cellular modems. As a standalone unit, you can choose one connection option, but when you use VidiU Go with Core, Teradek’s optional cloud-based streaming management suite, you can combine all of these sources into a single robust connection; a technique called network bonding. That means you can get 1080p quality anywhere around campus without the risk of dropouts or pixelated video.
“We are in a new school so our press boxes all have internet. However, if you’ve ever been in a press box on game day, it’s crowded, noisy, and never very conducive to filming,” Karin said. “Now we can be away from everyone else to set up our cameras for the best possible shots and not have to worry about anyone but ourselves. We can also cover events off-campus like our town's annual tree lighting ceremony and not have to worry if we can connect to the internet or not.”
Another unique advantage of Teradek’s Core platform is that it unlocks VidiU Go’s HEVC compression capabilities. Typically, encoders compress your video using H.264, or AVC. HEVC delivers the same video quality as AVC, but at half of the bandwidth. This translates into lower data rates while streaming, which means less overhead on your network and fewer data costs if you’re streaming over cellular. With Core, the HEVC compression is automatically converted to H.264 for delivery to your favorite streaming destination.
Core is a great resource for production crews like Catawba Ridge High School’s news team. While VidiU Go works well as a standalone encoder, combining it with Core offers additional benefits, such as multi-destination streaming, remote configuration, and as mentioned above, network bonding.
According to Karin, “The coolest Core feature is that it can stream to multiple platforms at once - no reposting! I’m also not super skilled when it comes to live streaming but the interface is pretty user friendly and intuitive.”
When you use Core and VidiU Go together, the video feed is first sent to the cloud and then distributed to as many destinations as you like. That means you can publish the same stream to your school’s website and Facebook Page simultaneously, which is a great way to get far more viewers than you’ve ever had before.
Another great benefit of Core is that it allows you to remotely manage and configure VidiU Go from anywhere with an internet connection. That means your producer can sit in the newsroom and keep an eye on the stream’s settings while the camera-operator is on the football field capturing the action.
VidiU Go starts at just $1,199.00 for the HDMI version, and Core offers an optional pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay for the data you use. To learn more about which model is perfect for your school, contact sales@teradek.com.