Has anybody used both of these devices? My specialty is corporate conferences and has been for around a decade but I'm always behind the times when it comes to getting the feed of the slides from presenter who is speaking/presenting. For years I've either pointed a shitty cam at the projector to use for timing later once I get the powerpoint, keynote, etc.. slide decks for timing and match in post, or been handed digital videos files from house AV when the client has the budget. Now I want to start capturing the digital video files myself to save a ton of time so my goal is the Datavideo DAC-70 to Black Magic Video Assist. Has anybody used both of these?

I was looking at getting a Decimator unit because most of the time when I run a signal into my Odyssey 7Q+, it is 1080p60. For a whole day's worth of sessions, that's a lot of content even in ProRes LT (ProRes Proxy quality was not acceptable). With the Decimator, I would have a passthrough for HDMI (the Odyssey won't pass audio through itself out of the HDMI out port) and I'd send a 1080p24 or 1080p30 signal for capture. The ProRes is still too large, but it would be less of a filling up of 1TB every day with 60p.

However, now I'm considering this device (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1312838-REG/datavideo_nvs_30_h_264_video_streaming_encoder_supports.html?ap=y&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3KzdBRDWARIsAIJ8TMQabKknV7v5gSO4hZtKGpmlp8JHTw4qVHCpUTNLZGp9wkww5JxoDOEaAuIoEALw_wcB&smp=y). This would record H.264 instead of ProRes (I'd probably set it to the max of 30Mbps), and you can pick to record at half frame rate. I'd have to test this, but I assume it means you'd get 30p H.264s instead of 60p, which would be fine. It would also record to cheap SD card media, which would be ideal.

I don't need the streaming element of the recorder, but I haven't come across any standalone solutions that are any cheaper.

Datavideo do a recorder it is HDR-1 https://www.datavideo.com/product/HDR-1

I am looking at one and it seem to meet every thing I am looking for.

Totally agree with finding a pro solution if that’s what you need. However, I’ve found a nifty little device that does what we’re asking - record a relatively low bitrate 1080p H264 file of slides. It’s also helpful because it can be used as a loop through between laptop and projector at smaller venues with no AV support.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYWBG1I/din02c-20

Press the button and it works! Plug in a 16Gb USB stick and it records all day. There are actually a lot of these types of units around, this is just one I happened to find for cheap locally. Perfectly timed slides DO change your life! :)

Nate, interesting find. It says it does not work with USB 3.0 devices, have you tried a 3.0 flash drive?

Yeah, works fine with a cheapie Sandisk 16GB USB3.0 thumb drive. I stick a little 3.5mm mic on it as well to get sync sound.

Yeah I went this cheaper route 2 years ago. Got 2 or 3 game recording devices and used them for a 2 day conference. At first I purchased two different ones and then compared them. I kept 2 of them after the conference and returned two. But there were a variety of problems with each of the gaming capture devices that made them unreliable. I can't remember everything that didn't work now which isn't very helpful here but I remember needing to plug a portable hard drive into it that had to be formatted to NTFS or it wouldn't work. Plus there was order of operations for turning it on, versus a signal being passed through, vs pressing record or stop in the right order, and I remember if the record didn't go properly it would skunk the drive. So I got them to work about 40% of the time but I constantly had to check the device and reboot and all this other stuff that just sucked. That's why I'm thinking about a more pro solution now, especially since I already have a Black Magic Video Assist.

Totally agree with finding a pro solution if that’s what you need. However, I’ve found a nifty little device that does what we’re asking - record a relatively low bitrate 1080p H264 file of slides. It’s also helpful because it can be used as a loop through between laptop and projector at smaller venues with no AV support.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYWBG1I/din02c-20 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYWBG1I/din02c-20/din02c-20)

Press the button and it works! Plug in a 16Gb USB stick and it records all day. There are actually a lot of these types of units around, this is just one I happened to find for cheap locally. Perfectly timed slides DO change your life! :)

Got it. The decimator looks like the cheaper version of the DAC-70 and it appears to also take SDI/HDMI in and and can Output them as well. And sound is passed through also. I wonder then what the advantages of the DAC-70 has over the Decimator (if any) then?

That's a really good point about the ProRes LT Capture though. I looked it up on Black Magic's website (the BM VA has the same issue as the Odyssey) and at 1080P24 you get 3.47 hours of recording time on a 256 GB SD card. And you're right too that ProRes Proxy isn't good enough. It would be nice to have something in the middle with H.264 you're right. Perhaps the Datavideo NVS-30 that you and Tony mentioned is the best option. it's just that it's $300 more than the DAC-70 and $500 more than the decimator. Another option is to buy a 512GB SD card for $160 to get a full day out of it, and then just run the files through compressor for a day after the fact and convert them to H.264. Not ideal but cheaper. Though the thought of not having to spend the time to do that conversation is pretty appealing to I have to admit.

One thing about that NVS-30 is that it doesn't take SDI In. So in many cases we'd still need a little SDI to HDMI convertor to feed the signal coming from the house into HDMI. So that's a small cost increase as well but mostly negligible.

One thing I'm wondering though. If we get as pricey as $800 for the NVS-30 maybe it begs the question of why not spend $200 more and get the Black Magic ATEM Switcher, where we could capture the files in H.264 via Black Magic's native app and also have a live switcher! What do you guys think? Are there key elements to the ATEM that I'm missing that make it not do everything we need that the NVS-30 would do?


I was looking at getting a Decimator unit because most of the time when I run a signal into my Odyssey 7Q+, it is 1080p60. For a whole day's worth of sessions, that's a lot of content even in ProRes LT (ProRes Proxy quality was not acceptable). With the Decimator, I would have a passthrough for HDMI (the Odyssey won't pass audio through itself out of the HDMI out port) and I'd send a 1080p24 or 1080p30 signal for capture. The ProRes is still too large, but it would be less of a filling up of 1TB every day with 60p.

However, now I'm considering this device (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1312838-REG/datavideo_nvs_30_h_264_video_streaming_encoder_supports.html?ap=y&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3KzdBRDWARIsAIJ8TMQabKknV7v5gSO4hZtKGpmlp8JHTw4qVHCpUTNLZGp9wkww5JxoDOEaAuIoEALw_wcB&smp=y). This would record H.264 instead of ProRes (I'd probably set it to the max of 30Mbps), and you can pick to record at half frame rate. I'd have to test this, but I assume it means you'd get 30p H.264s instead of 60p, which would be fine. It would also record to cheap SD card media, which would be ideal.

I don't need the streaming element of the recorder, but I haven't come across any standalone solutions that are any cheaper.

One thing about that NVS-30 is that it doesn't take SDI In. So in many cases we'd still need a little SDI to HDMI convertor to feed the signal coming from the house into HDMI. So that's a small cost increase as well but mostly negligible.

For me, I need something that's portable (I routinely do this out of state), and I almost always have an HDMI source. I'd prefer to have it the first thing straight from the laptop. I've personally not run into needing to convert SDI into HDMI, though when I was considering the Decimator, I was going to take SDI into an Odyssey. The issue is that it all has to be up front with everything because I really can't be lugging around 150' of cable for any potential length of runs needed from the front of house. That also takes my recorder out of the mix for anything else I would need it for.

One thing I'm wondering though. If we get as pricey as $800 for the NVS-30 maybe it begs the question of why not spend $200 more and get the Black Magic ATEM Switcher, where we could capture the files in H.264 via Black Magic's native app and also have a live switcher! What do you guys think? Are there key elements to the ATEM that I'm missing that make it not do everything we need that the NVS-30 would do?

For me, the ATEM requires a laptop. so now I have a laptop taken out of the mix or I have to travel with two machines. That's not idea, especially considering that, the majority of the time, it's just me. The NVS-30 is pricey (the HDR-1 is a bit better at $499), but it's an all-in-one solution. One box, does everything.

Ah got it. For corporate conferences I'm pretty posted up so I don't need portability that much. And I'd add the extra luggage costs (if there were any) and stuff to the bill.

For me personally usually House AV wants to send me always via SDI and avoid what they consider the more consumer standard of HDMI (especially if it's a long run of cable). However my Black Magic video Assist takes either Mini-SDI or HDMI, and since I have HDMI cables already I'd probably go that route. Or I could just get an SDI to Mini SDI adapter I suppose.... So for me I'm having the house run me SDI cable from backstage 150 feet where I'lll have a couple cameras on sticks. But I can easily make room and add a laptop and whatever to the scenario. I always have one laptop with me anyway, so I'm set there.

I hadn't heard about the HDR-1. That's a little bit better than paying for NVS I suppose. Although I feel like maybe the streaming component might be awesome. Makes me want to pitch live streaming as a possibility to my clients. If I tested it and got everything weekend I could see that potentially increasing the budget.

For the ATEM I don't know enough about it yet. It's a dream of mine to have live edit setup. Very often when I'm filming conferences I hire an additional camera operator because the 2nd half of a day splits into tracks. That would mean potentially that I could have the 2nd camera op just run the standard wide, and tracking medium shot, and I could potentially live edit it. Have the first half of each day finished in real time! Once I started looking at $500 dollar solutions, all of a sudden the $995 ATEM doesn't seem as far away as a goal.
But I need to do research and find out more. Because I think it doesn't do any recording other than passing the signal through to my laptop at H.264 via their proprietary app. But maybe that's enough.... The main problem someone mentioned about a year ago was that supposedly it doesn't scale or allow multiple different formats like a 1080P 23.98 Camera Feed and 1080P 59.97 Slide feed. If that's true it's less useful and requires more hardware I suppose. It doesn't stream though and obviously it's twice the price.........

Makes me want to pitch live streaming as a possibility to my clients. If I tested it and got everything weekend I could see that potentially increasing the budget.

In my experience, the lack of proper bandwidth to livestream video at most venues (necessitating the use of a LiveU pack) and the dozen or so live viewers on average for most events that don't have the draw of say, a celebrity, means that clients will be unwilling to pay any extra for it.

That could be the case that's true. I've only done it 2 or 3 times low budget status (one camera through a Black Magic Convertor) using Livestream and there's always issues with the internet.

Believe it or not Nate, I'm thinking one of the cheap little recorders might be my best option after doing a ton of research on potentially bigger purchases like the the BM Hyperdeck Mini and stuff like that to go with BlackMagic Atem HD Switcher.

I think what I'll do is take the slides feed from the house and record it via the device you mentioned. Since it works as an output as well (something a bunch of the big dogs don't do), then I can pass the output through to my switcher. At which point I can still do a live edit with the connected cameras and that slide feed and record that final Program to my Black Magic Video Assist at Apple ProRes LT quality.

My main thing was I wanted a hardware solution that recorded the slides like I needed in case something went wrong with the live edit so I didn't loose the timed slide record. And that if did it without needing a laptop as well. Also the fact that you can stick a little mic on it for sync is awesome too. And you're saying USB 3.0 works as well?

How compressed are the slides btw? Do you have any problems with the device being for lack of a better term, wonky? As I mentioned earlier in this thread I had a hell of a time getting the several cheap recorders I got to work a few years ago. Hell, theoretically I could buy a second one of these and do an H.264 capture of the final program record as well (although the Atem doesn't have an HDMI Program Out so I'd need to convert SDI to HDMI to do that. But then I'd even have a low quality backup of the entire live edit. Have you tried to capture recorded footage with it at all? I'm curious about how heavy the compression is.

Gentlemen,

Your discussing something I have 20 years of experience doing so I will help if I can. Recording corporate meetings in a ballroom was my bread and butter for many years. I understand it from the meeting planners side, the AV side, and your side.

I do not want to tell anyone what they should do so please don't hear it that way. I have a formula for you may want to consider. I understand money matters to us all. Fortunately the rates to do this work properly are good enough to use the proper equipment and not worry about "a few hundred dollars" if you have regular gigs.

First, begin with the end in mind. The end goal is to deliver a quality product and do as little post as possible. I have done hundreds of these massive multi-day gigs and recorded as much as 40 hours of video to be delivered. Of course they are all not like that but many are. I can't even imagine going into post again and syncing multi-camera feeds, slides and audio again. For many years now my post production basically consists of titles and graphics only. Forty hours of raw feeds in post if you have to actually cut between sources can translate to countless days of your time and a loss in profit or an untimely delivery. The only way to avoid it is to edit live via a switcher. I suggest your goal needs to be avoiding or minimizing post-production. Yes it costs more but the reward can pay for itself on one gig.

Fortunately these days you don't have to pay big bucks for broadcast switchers like I have. Check out Rolands line of switchers. The name of the game when interfacing with corporate AV is versatility. You need to build an adaptable system that can handle signal flow of many types. That is where SDI, HDMI and scaling come in. My Decimator is a powerful and useful tool. Not just because it converts HDMI to SDI etc. SDI and HDMI are simply cable types and conduits for a signal. The Decimater is an amazing signal processing cross converter. That is it's strength. When interfacing with AV systems your going to get either SDI (most common) or HDMI feeds and the signal is going to be whatever they are sending to the projectors. The cost of switchers varies greatly by how many of the inputs have built in "scalers". You need a switcher with at lest one scaled input. The Decimator often works as an external scaler for additional inputs.

I am not going to bad mouth Black Magic (again) here but I will say why I won't recommend them for this type of work. It is safe to say they can be temperamental and don't play well with other kids on the block. They work well if you are building a system for yourself and will be working with a fixed set of signals every time. They keep cost down by building limited components on their lower end gear. I am encouraging you to consider adaptability and comparability with the AV video world.

Video guys tend to think of production as a two step process, acquisition phase and post. In corporate meeting video production you have the ability to almost eliminate the huge burden of reliving countless hours of all those boring meetings in your editing sweet. Once you have completed a gig live by sitting in front of your switcher you will never go back to multi-track editing again.

And yes, I have traveled with switchers to over 30 states for corporate gigs. Lugging one around is a small price to pay for the reward you get. Hope this helps, I do know you guys are discussing less costly options but if you have the gigs you can afford better gear. How can you afford not to spend most of your time editing?

Kind Regards,

Steve

The only way to avoid it is to edit live via a switcher. I suggest your goal needs to be avoiding or minimizing post-production. Yes it costs more but the reward can pay for itself on one gig.

It literally cannot, because the cost of the switcher is not the problem. The problem is the cost of at least one camera operator minimum, because you can't switch and follow the speaker at the same time.

I am not going to bad mouth Black Magic (again) here but I will say why I won't recommend them for this type of work.

I will say that I had the Blackmagic Cross Converter to do a straight HDMI->SDI to go out to an Odyssey and it didn't work with MacBooks, which is a huge must-have for me, so I'll be getting the Decimator if I decide to go the SDI route.

Video guys tend to think of production as a two step process, acquisition phase and post.

While I agree with this in general, I actually just did a shoot in which I was running teleprompter and using vMix to toggle in graphical elements that are typically done in post, including motion graphics. This worked pretty well, but again, with my process, the extra cost is in needing to have a second camera operator, especially when doing events out of state.

And yes, I have traveled with switchers to over 30 states for corporate gigs. Lugging one around is a small price to pay for the reward you get.

You don't even have to lug one around. The Odyssey 7Q+ with the Apollo option (or the straight-up Apollo unit)is perfectly suited for this kind of shoot, especially with a Decimator to send out SDI into unit at a matching framerate, the cost is in the second operator, which is ongoing. And second operators bring with them reliability issues or simple competence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Digges
"The only way to avoid it is to edit live via a switcher. I suggest your goal needs to be avoiding or minimizing post-production. Yes it costs more but the reward can pay for itself on one gig."

Gary "It literally cannot, because the cost of the switcher is not the problem. The problem is the cost of at least one camera operator minimum, because you can't switch and follow the speaker at the same time"

These are all day gigs at the least. Corporate convention work is often multiple days and evenings in a row. They are not one man gigs. I have had many clients I call "refugies" in a joking way because they hired a "professional video operator" to shoot their event and the meeting planner got completely hosed. These gigs go in the toilet all the time by guys who do not understand the scope of the work. I make money from loyal clients who fly me around the country to avoid a catrastify at their programs. Not bad mouthing anyone. Just saying in general they are not one camera and one man gigs. My minium set up is two cameras, a PowerPoint feed, and TWO guys. The other set ups are three camera operators on broadcast cameras with studio configs, CCUs, and an engineer on the switch. I can meet any budget and quality expectation. It scares me for the inexperienced on this board to think they can book a corporate gig and walk in to a big ballroom show and think they can pull it off. If it is an average general sesion and they have never been there before most guys will go down in flames.

Most "corporate meeting events" are far from some guy with a camcorder showing up and pointing it at a guy at a podium. Maybe we are not talking about the same kind of work?

Kind Regards,

Steve

Corporate convention work is often multiple days and evenings in a row.

Yes, very much so. I am doing one in Orlando next week. I did one of the same client in Las Vegas last year. Multiple days (3) and I'm hardly "off" the entire time. While I agree that these are not one man jobs in general, with me, they are. Although this year the Orlando job will have a second shooter because I film so many interviews (per speaker) that I can't get all the broll I need simply because I can't be in two places at the same time. Also, at this event I won't be filming stage presentations as the company putting on the event has that in their package (3 man crew with switcher).

While I have done a one camera out of necessity (small space, had to film interviews and a session simultaneously), that was done in UHD and then later on I did keyframing to simulate camera moves. Thankfully there wasn't much movement, though I definitely prefer the look of two cameras and have not made that a part of my workflow except in specific circumstances.

When you travel with two operators, do you fly with them as well and put them up in a room, or do you hire locally? I'm hiring locally in Orlando, but lucked out because there's a shooter who lives there that I've worked with before.

I can meet any budget and quality expectation.

I never look to meet corporate quality expectations, and I think that's what makes how I approach things differently than most.

Most "corporate meeting events" are far from some guy with a camcorder showing up and pointing it at a guy at a podium. Maybe we are not talking about the same kind of work?

We are talking about the exact same kind of work, I just have a different philosophy, approach, and I also use cameras that are ill-suited for this kind of work.

Believe it or not Nate, I'm thinking one of the cheap little recorders might be my best option after doing a ton of research on potentially bigger purchases like the the BM Hyperdeck Mini and stuff like that to go with BlackMagic Atem HD Switcher.

I think what I'll do is take the slides feed from the house and record it via the device you mentioned. Since it works as an output as well (something a bunch of the big dogs don't do), then I can pass the output through to my switcher. At which point I can still do a live edit with the connected cameras and that slide feed and record that final Program to my Black Magic Video Assist at Apple ProRes LT quality.

My main thing was I wanted a hardware solution that recorded the slides like I needed in case something went wrong with the live edit so I didn't loose the timed slide record. And that if did it without needing a laptop as well. Also the fact that you can stick a little mic on it for sync is awesome too. And you're saying USB 3.0 works as well?

How compressed are the slides btw? Do you have any problems with the device being for lack of a better term, wonky? As I mentioned earlier in this thread I had a hell of a time getting the several cheap recorders I got to work a few years ago. Hell, theoretically I could buy a second one of these and do an H.264 capture of the final program record as well (although the Atem doesn't have an HDMI Program Out so I'd need to convert SDI to HDMI to do that. But then I'd even have a low quality backup of the entire live edit. Have you tried to capture recorded footage with it at all? I'm curious about how heavy the compression is.

The little game recorder is not a perfect solution - it would be better if you paired it with a Decimator :) Someone mentioned earlier that sometimes AV systems are set to odd resolutions depending on the projectors, and I don't know exactly what this little device would do if you fed it a non-standard size video resolution or frame rate. I can also see this being true with other options like the Video Assist or Atomos recorders.

The H264 video records at 1.5Mbps in 1080p, so quite low and really optimized for long record times and low-movement slides. That being said, I think it looks pretty good at that data rate. I am not sure if the loop-through HDMI stays uncompressed or not. The actual USB port is USB 2.0, but I used a 16GB USB 3.0 stick just fine.

I had an issue with it the other day doing a loop through via HDMI, where the audio from the Laptop didn't want to pass through the device into the house system, so I'm looking into getting a cheap HDMI doubler to eliminate the need to do a loop through connection in certain cases.

Hopefully that helps. I'm typically using this for speakers where it's not really expected by the client to have full-quality slides, so if things go south it's not the end of the world. For a big ballroom show, I would look into buying/renting more traditional, flexible equipment.

Here is the good news for you guys. The corporate AV world is very slow to change. It was not all that long ago when almost all powerpoint came out of a laptop as an RGB signal over the 15 pin VGA port at 1024 x 768 resolution. Fortunately those days are gone.

Almost all projectors these days are native 1080P @ 60htz. That is a common standard but it changes, a lot. Today AV guys have to be ready for any device or resolution a client sets down in front of them. That includes phones and tablets, both Mac & PC. Sounds like it would be simple just to make everything output 1080P but its not that easy. All devices don't do that. Presenters also design their slides in whatever res their device happens to be running. Sometimes, if you change the resolution to something other than what they were designed in things get wonky and the slides don't look right. That's when the technician jumps in and changes input and output settings on everything until they all work well together. That is why I mentioned adaptability is so important. You never know what you are going to be dealing with. It is far better now than it used to be but keep in mind AV techs have to be prepared to handle all signal flows.

Your slide feed can come from a variety of sources in a variety of formats. I suggest at least one of the things in your kit should be a HDMI DA or splitter. Of course you will also need to be able to handle SDI feeds (decimator). Please keep in mind when you interface with AV techs they will most likely be helpful in getting you a signal but they are not responsible for making that feed compatible with your system. Preplanning with the client and the AV techs will go a long way in ensuring you have a successful shoot.

Kind Regards,

Steve