The goal was to start live video streaming but I only had a Yamaha digital mixer and Windows PC.

The options are many as you may know and at one point I decided to combine handheld Canon SDI handheld cameras and either a Roland video switcher or Blackmagic Design ATEM but as I investigated more I decided to try something fairly new.

I like to achieve more with simple when possible so I decided to try out pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) Network Device Interface (NDI) camera even though this would be new territory for me since everyone I spoke to had SDI cameras.

The advantages were good enough for me.

  • I could run Cat5e Ethernet cables to the cameras instead of expensive SDI cables.
  • I could do without video switcher completely and use the existing PC instead.
  • I could have a lean setup by powering the cameras with Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch. This means that the same cat5e cable that runs to the cameras would also supply power, so no extension cords or adapters for power supply. Simple and clean I’d say.
  • With the number of software controllers out there I could decide not to use hardware PTZ controller like the HuddleCamHD joysticks for example.
  • With this camera I could do a lot easily over the network. I could put my previous networking experience to good use too. 🙂

So I ordered two PTZOptics PT12X-NDI cameras and mounted them as soon as they arrived. I had hoped to get everything completely hooked up into OBS in less than 24 hours but I was wrong! I had been playing with OBS before the cameras were delivered so I expected the rest to be fairly easy but that was not the case.

I had to figure out a number of key configuration items that was not obvious at first and I hope it helps you in case you find yourself faced with any of them.

1. How To Find Your Cameras On The Network?

This one is key as the camera would be accessed over the network which means they need an Internet Protocol (IP) address. There are two ways to go about this:

  1. You could first connect to the camera through its default IP address of 192.168.100.88 to get to the camera’s administration page where you can now set a different IP address or configure the camera to be assigned an IP address through Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). You may need to first set your computer IP address to something like 192.168.100.87 to be on the same IP subnet.
  2. Using the camera’s remote control press #*4 (in that order) to set the camera to DHCP so it can be assigned an IP address from your DHCP server (This may be your internet router). Once the camera reboots you can open up a web browser (Chrome, Mozilla, Safari or Internet Explorer) on your computer and browse to the IP. address of the camera.
  3. Ensure mDNS is enabled on the network.
  4. Enable NDI on the camera. Browse to the IP address of the camera, go to the video options to enable NDI.
  5. Optional: Name your camera to make it easy to identify in OBS. You do this from the web interface.

2. How To Get Your Camera Feed Into OBS?

  1. Download and install OBS-NDI plugin for OBS.
  2. Add a scene and then NDI source. See this OBS basic tutorial if you are new to OBS and do not know how to add a scene or source.

Multiple Cameras Being Detected As One In OBS

  1. If you have multiple cameras and multicast is enabled in your camera options, turn it multicast if you don’t need it.
  2. Another way is to ensure that cameras do not have the same default multicast IP address. This will cause a conflict such that the first camera that comes up on your network is the one OBS will detect. If the cameras have been added previously in OBS, when you select other camera source, their feed will display the camera that came up first on your network. If you are just adding the camera as an NDI source in OBS, you will only see one camera – the one that came up fist on the network.

How To Add ASIO Audio Source In OBS

As I mentioned before, I needed to get audio from a Dante-enabled Yamaha digital mixer into OBS. For some reason I had a hard time understanding how to get audio from the mixer into OBS.

At one one point I played with a ASIO Link Pro, which is an awesome tool by the way but I later found out it was unnecessary. To set this up all you need is the ASIO Plugin for OBS Studio.

Already, I could get audio into the PC using Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS) with Nuendo Live and Cubase on the same PC. Getting the audio in OBS was the challenging part but ASIO plugin for OBS solved that.

To summarize:

  • Install and enable Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS).
  • Install ASIO plugin for OBS.
  • In Dante controller if you don’t have already.
  • Open Dante Controller and patch the stereo output of the Dante enabled digital audio mixer to two channels of DVS. Make a note of the channel numbers.
  • Open OBS and go to the setting of ASIO plugin for OBS.
  • Select DVS to configure it.
  • Check the box that activate DVS for ASIO.
  • Select the two channels you had patched to DVS from the audio mixer using Dante Controller.

That would be applicable to you if you have a Dante-enabled audio source.

Hope you find this useful. If you do, leave a comment below and share with you connections and hopefully this will help someone out there as well.