Send cued audio/video feeds to audience mobiles

[wbdreynolds]

Hi all

I have a project coming up where we'd like to send separate audio and video feeds to audience's mobiles - has anyone ever done anything like this before? or know of a way to do it?!

Very like https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/qlab/trigger$20videos$20on$20ipad%7Csort:date/qlab/5cXucod090g/kCG4pg67BAAJ, but I want to let people choose between two streams, and we'll need to trigger a few different cues during the show.

We need to broadcast both audio-only and video-only streams to any and all audience members who choose to watch and/or listen. We can't hand out devices, so audience members need to be able to use their smartphone, though we can ask them to download an app if necessary.

I need the feeds to be low-latency, as they relate to the action on stage.

We'll need to trigger both audio and video streams from Qlab (at specific, cued points int he action), but I don't mind whether that means playing back the media within Qlab or trigging another system by OSC/midi/applescript.

I've found a couple of hardware solutions - https://en-uk.sennheiser.com/mobileconnect-smartphone-hearing-system-app and https://www.limeonair.com/ which accept an audio feed and broadcast it over a wireless network, audiences then install an app on their phone which they use to access the feed. I haven't yet found anything similar for video.

I've also thought about live-streaming the two feeds on the internet and sending audiences to a webpage to view in their browser - I suspect this wouldn't be low enough latency, or that latency wouldn't be reliable. I don't know if the venue's wifi/internet access would be up to it either!

And finally, I wondered if there's an app out there that would cache the feeds in advance and could be triggered to playback specific clips over wifi (ideally by eg osc/applescript commands from qlab). Like Multivid or https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ivideoshow/id501016015?mt=8 - but it seems like neither of these would be that easy for audience members to self instal and use.

Mic, you mentioned in that post above the idea of triggering an OSC server "OSC cues off timecode in QLab targeting OSC apps on the iDevices. (or browsers targeting an OSC server)" - can you expand on that idea for me please? It sounds like it might be promising, but I don't fully understand the idea!

Thanks all!

Will

[micpool]

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 9:26:45 PM UTC+1, wbdreynolds wrote:

I have a project coming up where we'd like to send separate audio and video feeds to audience's mobiles

Very like https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/qlab/trigger$20videos$20on$20ipad%7Csort:date/qlab/5cXucod090g/kCG4pg67BAAJ, but I want to let people choose between two streams, and we'll need to trigger a few different cues during the show.

Mic, you mentioned in that post above the idea of triggering an OSC server "OSC cues off timecode in QLab targeting OSC apps on the iDevices. (or browsers targeting an OSC server)" - can you expand on that idea for me please? It sounds like it might be promising, but I don't fully understand the idea!

I was just talking about  text subtitles which was what that thread was about.. My suggestion was just using OSC capable apps on networked portable devices to display text sent over OSC, but it wan't a developed solution.

If you just want to be able to universally stream to any device an audience member have then  There are several low latency streaming methods available which would be accessible from any HTML5  capable browser. Something like

 https://red5pro.com 

might fit the bill 

Or you could experiment with open broadcaster streaming to Facebook Live or something.

I haven't done this, but it seems a more realistic proposition than downloading content to users mobile devices and providing an app that works on any version that could conceivably be in use  on any audience members phone.

Mic

 

[Andy Dolph]

A few thoughts about this.

I've done a fair amount of streaming through YouTube and Wowza Media Server before that - my experience is that I never got it reliable to a standard that I felt was really show quality.  Things would change at the last minute and all of the sudden it wouldn't work 2 hours before a show when it worked the day before, etc... Part of that is that we were doing it over the managed network of a public university, but we also found youtube changing things at surprising times.

We found latency to be very variable from 10 sec to over a minute, and it was never clear why.

Related to this - I know Atlas Pyrovision has an app that people can download to play the soundtrack linked to synchronized fireworks shows they broadcast timecode through a server and it syncs a pre-downloaded sound track.  the one time I tried it, it only sort of worked.

I think if I was going to approach this problem, I'd us a local network that doesn't connect to the internet that the audience members would all connect their phones to, it would probably need a real IT backbone and multiple APs, I doubt that a standard home router (even a high end one) could handle more then 30-50 simultaneous connections, but I could be wrong.  then you'd have everyone go to a URL that would hit a streaming server on that local network - probably the thing to do would be a continuous stream, sending black video and silence when there's no content to send - but this is all hypothetical, and I have no idea how well it would actually work.

Andy

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[Gunnar Seidel]

Maybe TCPSyphon could help? http://techlife.sg/TCPSyphon/

In Qlab add a surface with "Syphon Output Only". Install and start TCP Syphon Server on your Mac and select the Qlab Surface (Encode Mode: Turbo JPEG is best), select the quality. On your iDevice install and start TLSyphonViewer, it should connect automatically, press "close" at the end of the screen, then the screen should be black, the app is now receiving the Syphon. Now you can start a video cue in Qlab and it will be shown on the IPhone.

Unfortunatelly it doesn't support audio. And I just tested it with one single iPhone 5! ;-) According to Techlife also multiple iDevices should be able to receive it depending on your network of course.

However, maybe it could help?

[Jonathan Pearce]

The issue with going out over the internet is that your internet connection then needs to provide enough bandwidth for each audience member to download the stream - so 50-2000 times the bandwidth of a single stream.

The issue with using a local network and the audiences' own phones is that most phones/tablets throw a hissyfit if a wifi they connect to doesn't have internet. Fine for us tech types who can acknowledge the warning message and dismiss it, but most audience members will panic and disconnect thinking you are stealing all their messages and photos... Or you make your local network have a very heavily throttled site and port blocked internet connection so that the phones can all ping their manufacturer's server and be happy without ending up acting as an internet connection for everyone's phones to sync their whole cloud drives via.

Or - prewrite an app that is compatible with most versions of iOS and Android, that then downloads most of the content in advance (in an extremely compressed format - don't expect people to have more than 500MB available...) and then receives some triggering command over the internet. Not a simple endeavour.

Probably best achieved with tablets that you own and control and can setup to cope with a network that has no internet access, then live stream to those via OBS or similar. You'll still need a beefy network, not a domestic router, with proper AP client management; but at least you should be able to stream as broadcast not unicast which will keep the traffic sensible.

[Tatarintseva, Masha]

Thank you Jonathan,

The audiance are not connecting to the app. My apologies if my post was misleading in that regard.  There is just one iPad that an actor is using to send live feed to qlab throughout the show which we fade in and out between other cues over a span of 2hours.  

We set up a separate router for the iPad at 5G with a password so others do not use it.  I was able to fix the freezing glitch last night in tech, but still figuring out the frame rate drop. We will be trying to take a hard cat5e line from the airport extreme to the mac show computer to see if it will improve the situation. 

Thank you very much for your feedback!

-MT

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[Steven Sokulski]

Hi Will,

What you’re looking to do reminds me a bit of an interactive multiplayer game Disney created as a preshow for one of their nightly shows. The game is a Simon style puzzle and Disney makes it work in real-time by requiring users to connect to a specific WiFi network that provides direct access to a local web server.

Users visit a webpage, so no app install is needed, and all of the media for the game is downloaded right at the start.

This allows the signal between the server and devices to simply be small websocket packets that say “go cue 1” etc.

It’s very fast and responsive. I’ve used a similar technique to create mobile devices that changed color on command from a QLab file. It was merely a proof of concept, but it worked a treat.

This challenge is a unique blend of web development, networking, and show control. But it seems totally doable given enough time and resources.

[william reynolds]

Steven this sounds great! 

Do you have any resources about how to do that you could share with me?

I get the idea of seeing up a Web page with streaming on a local lab Web server, but i wouldn't know where to start with pre downloading all the media and then triggering it from qlab! 

Best wishes
Will

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[Steven Sokulski]

The way I’d attack this depends quite a bit on how many cues you’re talking about.

Most mobile browsers will eventually get angry if you load too much content in advance.

Audio is pretty easy since it’ll likely be quite small. There’s a JavaScript library called Howler that I’ve been playing with lately that uses the idea of audio sprites, where one long audio file is loaded and then the playhead position is moved around as needed to create the impression of multiple files.

Doing the same with video would be a big challenge.  What’s the nature of the video content? Could any part of it be recreated in a JavaScript animation?

Feel free to email me off-list if any of this is sensitive. Not sure our chat about specific mechanisms will be super useful to the gang here, anyways.

Steven

ste...@neonpineapple.live

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[Steven Sokulski]

On the control front, I’d probably write the backend server in Node.js. There’s an OSC package that can function as a client on the server side, relaying out the websocket signage as it receives OSC commands from QLab.

I’ve been meaning to spend more time with that particular piece of it lately. There’s one particular library out there that looks particularly promising for receiving OSC commands in a web app.

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On Nov 3, 2018, at 12:17 PM, william reynolds <wbdre...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[william reynolds]

Hi steven

Leaving it on list for a little longer in case it's relevant to others! 

Video is actually text only (titles for some time coded sections of the show), so could probably be built as a java script animation (or flash, or something else). But equally it doesn't need to be a particularly big file if it stayed as simply video. 

I  guess we could maybe build some advance caching into the system at strategic points during the show rather than requiring it all to happen before the start, perhaps linked to the triggers moving the playhead around. 

Best wishes
Will

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[Wayde Buttimore]

Hey, sorry been following but havnt had time to post. 

i have a working nodejs server for osc and web base control with osc back and forth.. i wont have time till next week to look into it, but remind me and ill see what i can throw together, sholuldnt be to hard to adjust to your needs

cheers

wayde

[mic]

Hi,

what you're describing is what I'm currently doing for my last show. I wished audience was able to receive text, audio and images; moreover, i wanted a voting system that allows to receive OSC with audience choiches.

After some testing and researching, i decided to use mobiles own cellular connection and not local wifi, as this last choiche implied high cost and too much time for a local wifi to be resinstalled in every venue the show was programmed. And you can't trust on theatre wifi: what if they allow less connection than audience phones?

Actually the system is based on a FireBase DB and a webapp that communicates with clients. On a internet connection mac on stage runs a console that allows communcation with server via OSC.

Of course, this system doesn't guarantee low latency, as this depends on connection issues you can't control. Anyway media are preloaded so that information running are just ones that tells clients what content to show. Moreover, you can show different content per-client.

I can't share the code but surely I can put you in contact with the developer if you're interested.

regards

   michele