BirdDog MAKI Live camera

[sftechguy]

Greetings, all...

For an upcoming production, the director and projection designer are wanting to have live video from a camera onstage, operated by a cast member.  In researching options beyond using a phone running an appropriate NDI application over a closed WiFi network, I came across the aforementioned camera, the description of which is here: https://birddog.tv/makilive-overview/

I was just curious if anybody here has any experience with this camera as an NDI video source within QLab, good or bad.

Looking forward to seeing your responses...

-scott

[Sam Kusnetz]

I’ve never used that camera specifically, but Birddog generally makes excellent gear and I would expect it to work very well.

It is priced accordingly!

Sam  

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Sam Kusnetz (he/him) | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

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[sftechguy]

Thanks for that, Sam. We've gone ahead and purchased one and we'll see how it does.  I'll try to report back on our experience with it.

-s

[Paul]

I've not used that Live model but I have used the Birddog Maki Ultra (4k) for video relay purposes on a show (wired PoE and NDI) and it had very good low light performance; could recall presets from QLab quite easily and web interface has lots of options. Took a little bit of trial and error to find the best settings. The auto focus was slow which limited zoom usage in this application.

So the questions I would be asking is what have they had to change to reduce the size and get the weight down to 330g while adding a battery? I guess the lens optics are not quite as good as that will save a lot of weight, which may affect low light performance which may not be an issue in your use case.

Also bear in mind you can buy 3  Maki Live  cameras for the price of the Maki Ultra, so I would expect anything like the same level of performance. It could certainly be useful in those first person POV actor held camera situations (more convenient form factor than a phone).

Lastly with anything wifi, test throughly in performance conditions. Once an audience arrive with their phones, wifi connection can be difficult; you can ask audience to turn off phones/wifi but they don't always comply. Can help to use 5GHz band with good quality router located close to camera on stage as possible. 

Once you have it be good to see some video here to see quality.

[sftechguy]

Thanks for the thoughts/suggestions, Paul.  I'll see what we can do about capturing some video from the show (runs in March).

-s