Event Streaming

VidSumitt Case StudyCUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Learn how a large conference makes $100k+ selling virtual tickets

VidSummit is the leading Video Marketing Conferencing hosted in Los Angeles, California each year in October. 2017 was the first year VidSummit sold virtual ticket access to the live conference produced with PTZOptics cameras. Derral Eve’s the event organizer is a social media leader and YouTube influencer who was able to leverage his social media channels to drive massive amounts of virtual tickets for the event. The event was two days long and included live streaming from three separate rooms. Virtual ticket holders were given access to a private CDN (Enterprise Stream.Live) where they would receive exclusive access to the live conference plus on-demand access to the video content. 98% of virtual ticket sales also purchased the on-demand video content and virtual ticket revenue surpassed $100,000.

PTZOptics 20X-SDI camera mounted on a tripod. This camera was used as an audience viewpoint ideal for capturing the Q&A.
Virtual ticket sales paid for the entire VidSummit conference expenses. The event was so successful PTZOptics has a free course available for training.
An IP Joystick was used to control three cameras in the main ballroom. Ethernet cabling is affordable and ideal. Don’t miss the full behind the scenes video of this live streaming system available on our YouTube Channel.

This year we teamed up with David Foster, the Head Geek of Geeks Life and Co-Founder of Live Streaming Pros. The plan was simple. PTZOptics will supply all of the cameras, cables and PoE switches and Live Streaming Pros will provide their custom-made live streaming computers running vMix. Each room would have at least 2 PTZ cameras and a static ZCam all connected via 3G SDI cabling to the PCIe capture cards available inputs in each streaming PC. There are three main rooms including the Main Ball Room, a Theater and a large room called “West Chester”. Each room has speakers lined up to be live streamed and recorded from 8 AM to 6 PM each day with a 1-hour break for lunch at noon.

For the large room, we have (2) 20X SDI PTZOptics cameras along with a Wide Angle ZCAM-VL box camera we have set up for a stage/crowd shot. This is the stage where are the biggest name keynote speakers are going to present. The combination of our three cameras in total will allow us to use one camera for tracking the talent with our PTZ joystick. Each PTZ camera for the large room will be controlled over IP using the IP-JOY Joystick which will be connected to the same ethernet switch as the cameras. Each camera will have it’s own IP address and can be controlled with the joystick, vMix or any iOS mobile device. Since this is a public event we were sure to bring a WAP (Wireless Access Point) with

The Theater Room is also fairly large and ideal for multiple PTZ cameras. The plan is similar to the Main Ballroom except we will be using the HuddleCamHD Serial joystick controller which is a little easier to set up since there is no networking involved. The three camera setup will allow the camera operators to smoothly transition in-between camera angles and follow speakers that are moving on stage.

David has recently converted from Livestream Studio to vMix for live video production and hasn’t looked back. I am an avid vMix user myself so we go along quite nicely. On the software side, David made sure to have VidSummit branded content made in the vMix title editor which allowed us to quickly popular lower third titles throughout the event as speakers changed. We were also able to connect to each camera over the network for IP camera control inside vMix. This allows us to create known camera preset positions inside vMix with names. Once each camera is connected to the vMix system we can open the input, select the PTZ tab and create presets which take little snapshots of the camera’s viewpoint from that position. Since we are working with volunteers in each room it’s great to have a list of preset position where they can see exactly where the camera will go with the click of a button.

The actual live streaming will be done with a LiveU wireless internet connection. My advice to Derral Eves the event manager was to live streaming in 720p and record the events to a local hard drive in 1080p. David recommended recording the cameras in 1080p at 60 frames per second to get the best crisp quality that he uses for his own live streaming and video production.