Live Video feed to back stage

Ryan111 · 30 Jul 2014 at 21:09

I have been asked to help out with a dance show in a couple months time. They need a live video feed to a couple of back rooms to enable the acts to see whats going on on-stage to ensure they don't miss there start etc. If I can send audio as well that would be good, but if not, I can do that separately.

I did the same last year, but all was thrown together very quickly and I ended up using a random video camera with a composite video output, then extended it around 40m over rca extender cables into a 42" TV then split it again and extended it another 10m into a projector!

Needless to say the quality of the image at the other end wasn't the best, but it just about did the job for the show.

This year, the venue is bigger, and the length of cable run from when a camera could be to backstage is going to be around 50m.

Ive looked at using HDMI over cat5e/6 baluns which look like they would work, but have also looked at somehow streaming a webcam/camera over the network. This would be my preferred choice as I could simply set up a couple of laptops linked to screens and connect them to a simple network switch and stream over a gigabit network.

Does anyone have any experience of a situation like this?

Cheers

Ryan

abbotsmike · 30 Jul 2014 at 23:25

Budget? Most theatre based show relay systems that I've seen are just CCTV cameras.

Assuming Cat5/network is available, I'd be inclined to rig up an IP CCTV camera and just access the live stream from a couple of laptops.

Ryan111 · 31 Jul 2014 at 17:32

Not really sure on budget, as this hasn't been discussed yet, but I would say as low as possible...

There is a network there, not sure if I can get use of it or not but I have a couple hundred meters of decent cat5e which I could make up my own small network

I was looking at IP CCTV cameras but wasn't sure what the FPS etc was, they need it to be quite smooth video with little or zero delay etc

D.P. · 31 Jul 2014 at 19:22

I would probably just do an IP camera. Costs around 50-100 quid depending on model.

Ryan111 · 31 Jul 2014 at 20:11

Thats what I'm now thinking D.P, although once the show is done, we will have no use for the camera?

What sort of spec should I be looking for? The camera needs to be able to capture the whole stage and be of good quality so they can see clearly backstage

I would assume that watching a live stream would be smooth and not stutter? I guess this would depend on the camera... Any suggestions for cheapish IP cameras, only used inside, no night vision required

Cheers again, Ryan