So RICE Rally 2019 Sydney is happening again, and I’ve been asked to help out again with lyrics and video playout for the event!

Being you know, poor - I love free software that can do the job.
And as a software developer, open source software makes me really excited too (but free is better).

NewTek NDI

The magic glue that holds all of this together is NewTek’s NDI protocol - a video and audio over IP solution that works pretty darn well.

Caspar CG

Caspar CG is a media playout client/server software - similar to something like ProVideoPlayer and Watchout (but free)

Like last year for RICE Rally 2018 Sydney, I’ll be using Caspar CG again to play the background motion loops.

To get NDI support, there’s a guide that I followed here - Thanks Lange!

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS)

OBS is a free and open source broadcast software that allows you to live stream, as well as record.
For my purpose, I use it as a budget vision switcher and overlay program.

To get NDI support, install obs-ndi.

Here, we can then ingest CasparCG and ProPresenter 6’s NDI feeds and combine them together, as well as apply a Chroma Key filter on to the ProPresenter 6 source to achieve transparency

Case

I don’t have a means of transporting my desktop tower… If only I had a rack-mount computer case…
My church does! So I switched the parts.

Networking

I had a spare Ubiquiti Unifi UAP (the very first model) lying around, so I configured it with the UniFi app on my phone, and screwed it onto a 1RU rack shelf.
I also mounted on a D-Link gigabit router, with its wireless radio turned off.

Good enough