Live Video Switching & Webcasting
Live video is great for engaging audiences, both live audiences and those viewing remotely in another room or another city via live video webcast. A simple one camera feed can deliver great results but sometimes an event calls for multiple camera angles, edited, and broadcast live over the internet.
Shawn Lam is an experienced Technical Director and Live Video Switcher and his talented video production crew will make sure that your live-switch event is dynamic and engaging to your audiences.
Video switching and webcasting is now offered in high definition video.
Shawn Lam mixing 7 inputs & 3 outputs
Live Switching Case Study
In March 2010, I produced a live multi-camera event for webcaster INSINC, and their client, the BC Education Leadership Council. The event was the final student-led webcast in a 7 part series as part of the BC Ministry of Education’s commitment to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. What made this webcast unique was that it included, via video conference, the next student Olympic webcast team who were in a video conference studio in London, UK – London is the host of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
My production team consisted of 4 camera operators and 2 video switchers and were complemented by an audio and webcast team. The input/output requirements were complicated, to say the least. There were 4 live video camera angles from our studio location at UBC Telestudios, 1 live video conference feed from London, 1 DVD input for prerecorded video playback, and 1 VGA input from a laptop for slides. On the output side we required 2 professional video mixers to produce 3 different video mixes, one for the live online webcast, a second for the live studio audience, and a third for the return video conference feed to the London studio.
Our team communicated using a two-channel system of intercommunication headsets with microphones. One channel was dedicated to the video cameras, technical director, and video switcher and the second was used for the audio technicians, webcasters, and floor manager.
The broadcast of this “final” webcast was a success and John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Committee, was so pleased that he asked us to commit to bringing the team back together for another encore webcast with Sochi, Russia, home of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.