One of our frequent clients, a regular conference with mainstage, Q&A side-rooms, open floor with exhibitor booths, and a backstage interview newsroom, could no longer operate due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only were gatherings prohibited and dangerous, international travel was heavily restricted and inconvenient, often requiring lengthy quarantine periods. 

They were looking for an online solution to host the event live for an online audience, with internationally-based corporate executives, complete with branding, slides presentations, and a responsive Q&A session, with each presentation edited and released as a VOD within 48hrs. 

In a on-location production, this would not be a difficult task, however the requirement for each person and their slides to be phoned-in from a remote location.

Criteria:
We needed to develop a method for internationally-based company executives to deliver their presentations, interact with the a Host for a live Q&A, and perform an exclusive interview one-on-one with the Host for later release.

Each Mainstage and Q&A segment needed to be isolated and adapted into a short YouTube video within 48hrs, with the option of making adjustments per each presenter’s requests.

Challenges:
At the time of writing, Zoom reigns king of popular video-meeting softwares, with the most users actively on, and comfortable with, the interface and best-practices. The only reliable method that we have found to capture a Zoom video feed is to perform a desktop capture. This would require a separate computer for each presenter on the call.

In our on-location workflow, we record the event in-camera in addition to recording our live-edit, allowing us the flexibility of making adjustments in post-production in case something unexpected happened during the live-recording. In virtual meetings this posed an issue, as there are no dedicated recording devices applicable to the situation.

The entire show needed to be presented to an online-platform, link-access only, and could not have any branding of the hosting platform.

Solutions:
To facilitate these requirements, we broke the project down into individual stages.
View unique instances of Zoom, allowing us to “pin” specific cameras, plus slides, simultaneously for live-capture.

Ingest the unique instances of Zoom to our live-edit software, where they would be composited in various combinations with the addition of title graphics and moving backgrounds.

Record the edited show and isolated feeds of each camera simultaneously, while broadcasting the show online.

Host the show in a non-3rd party-branded environment online.

Solution: Isolated Zoom Instances
We initially looked into purchasing a small fleet of cheap laptops, but quickly discarded that idea as the cost and control-input logistics became prohibitive.

After some additional research, we discovered some multi-HDMI output cards. Installing one into our designated “Zoom computer”, we were able to use one 3rd-party software to manage these outputs, and a second software to run sandboxed instances of Zoom independently from each other. We then attached each of the 4 HDMI outputs to our editing computer.

Due to Zoom’s format of presenting shared slides, we designated a separate computer to select and view the slides, splitting the monitor output and sending that to the editing computer as well.Solution: Isolated Capture, Program Editing, Broadcast
At first we decided to use our current live-edit laptop in concert with a Sonnet PCIe thunderbolt accessory, which hosted Blackmagic Design capture cards, as this method works quite well for our on-location productions already. We quickly discovered a GPU rendering and bandwidth bottleneck once we attempted to perform simultaneous recordings of Zoom and the Program Edit, so we began looking into options with higher rendering capabilities and increased bandwidth transmission.

Ultimately, we designed and built a new desktop, using a 12-core processor, GTX 3060 graphics card, and installed the Blackmagic Design capture cards directly to the motherboard, rather than through a Thunderbolt connection. With a desktop form-factor, we were also able to directly attach multiple drives, allowing us to designate an SSD for system operations, one for accessing critical production assets such as graphics and videos, one for recording, and a large HDD for bulk-storage. This further reduced any possibilities for data bottlenecks that could display as lagged or corrupted assets while live.

With this high-performance computer, we were able to record isolated feeds of 3 inputs and the program live-edit, push a signal to our in-house monitoring screens, and send a live-feed to the online video-hosting platform. Ultimately, in addition to the editing computer’s recordings, we needed to perform local-desktop recording on the slides computer, and set up an additional laptop to record a version with Zoom’s automatic camera switching.

Solution: Hosting
Our client wanted to present a premium experience to all viewers, and as such requested that the video be displayed on a webpage with their own branding, and completely devoid of the hosting platform’s branding. No YouTube recommended lists, post-playback thumbnails, no watermarks, nothing.

After looking around, we went for the obvious choice: Vimeo. With it’s built-in options, we were able to remove all branding, prevent viewers from clicking through to the channel and being distracted, or in any way see anything but the live broadcast, Q&A button, and appropriate branding on the website we embedded the video into. Their analytics tools were top-notch as well, allowing us to see a timeline-based viewer count, as well as when our broadcast was the “active window” on the viewer’s computer. Passing this information onto the presenters turned out to be a significant value add, as they could see the attention they garnered, and at what points in their presentation attendance grew or shrank.

Additional Notes:
Although we initially wanted to output a monitor for each presenter, often up to 8 persons, we discovered that when we surpassed 4 the virtual monitors’ rendering began to stutter. Working around this limitation we decided to use 4 virtual monitors, assigning them to the following:
– Zoom auto switching camera
– Main Presenter/Host
– Guest Presenter 01
– Guest Presenter 02

Using this layout, we would lock Monitor 02 on the Host, as they were most frequently on-screen, and in the case of a guest having technical issues, we could quickly cut to the host to keep the audience informed and entertained, possibly moving onto the next guest presenter in line while our back-end technicians worked with the initial guest.

Monitor 03 and 04 were used in an alternating pattern, with one guest “live” while queueing up the next scheduled guest on the other monitor, allowing a smooth and confident transition for our editor, and allowing us to preview and make any last-minute corrections before going live with the next guest.

Monitor 01 was kept on Zoom’s automatic camera switching, and used primarily for quick-switching sections, especially the Q&A sections, as it proved reliable enough and could take a large amount of heavy-lifting out of the coordination between our Zoom-switching operator and the Live-Editor.

Conclusion:
With this unique set of needs, we coordinated an approach that utilized 6 computers, 12 physical monitors, and 4 virtual monitors to coordinate, capture, and edit a dynamic Zoom call into a polished live broadcast production.

A regional chapter of Toastmasters International had their quarter-finals competition completely booked and prepared. They had the venue, the camera crew, the audience… and then COVID-19 struck. They could no longer host their competition in-person, but needed to maintain a high level of video quality which also conformed to exacting specifications as outlined by Toastmasters International policies. 

When We Film Events was booked to record the live event, we were handed exact instructions on how to film the event. These included:

• Recorded in 1920×1080 resolution at 29.94fps
• There could only be 1 camera
• The camera’s field of view had to capture the entire speaking area or stage.
• The stage had to be evenly lit and facial expressions easy to distinguish, with no lights facing the camera or otherwise impeding the camera’s ability to capture the stage clearly. 
• The camera could not be moved, repositioned, or the zoom distance changed at any point
• The audio had to be echo, buzz, and static free, with no excessive location sound detracting from clearly hearing the speaker.

Any breach of the above guidelines could be cause for instant disqualification of the speaker.

The question became, how to best match these requirements over a virtual event? We first had to figure out how to assemble everyone virtually in a manner that allowed the Judges to clearly see the Speaker without themselves being seen by any other participants, the Speaker to easily see both the Chair and the Timers, and the public audience to see only the Speakers. This platform also had to have both the best video and audio encoding quality and the most lag-free, stable connection possible. Then we had to consider that the typical built in camera and mic on many consumer devices are often only slightly short of deplorable, and shipping each contestant a mirrorless camera kit for the competition was simply out of the question.

Tackling the question of a hosting platform, we investigated using Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, and a custom solution using vMix. After some experimentation, we decided to use Zoom, as it had the best video quality and featureset (without watermarking) of all the consumer options, and while vMix did have a much higher standard of video encoding quality, the complexities including the number of call-in users and the requirements of who was permitted to see whom began to cause issues in our 2-computer workflow. Unfortunately, we could not simply press record in Zoom either, as in the spirit of maintaining the highest quality possible, we could not accept a recording which had either a watermark nor the “Recording” word and icon embedded into the video captured. 
 

Using built-in Zoom functionality, a member of their team hosted the meeting, creating a waiting room for security reasons and manually adding people from the waiting room into the call as their identities were confirmed. The Judges were to disable their audio and video, and cover their webcams to preserve anonymity, and they were to communicate on their phones with a leader who would convey their responses to the Chair. The Timers were to disable their audio, keeping their video active while blocking the camera physically, using the virtual background feature to colour their video input to the appropriate time remaining colour code. When the Chair asked whether the speaker went into overtime, one designated Timer was to unmute their audio and reply with a single word yes or no. 

To improve quality, we at Leaders Media and the Toastmasters competition organizers met with each contestant during the evenings prior to the contest date. When meeting we requested changes to their camera position so that all contestants had a visually equal presentation space, and that there were no obstructions to seeing the contestant. We monitored audio quality, requested an internet speed test, and made suggestions to modify both natural and artificial lighting in their space of choice, sometimes recommending another camera position to accommodate for awkward lighting. Once we were happy with the actual quality of their devices and the lighting of the space, we examined their local environment, requested items be moved or removed from the space to avoid distractions and unfortunate visuals on-air. We demonstrated and practiced the Timer indicators, proper mannerisms while live, and the order of events to be used on the day. 

On the day of the event, one of our team participated in the Zoom meeting with no audio or video, and using the Spotlight mode, did a basic virtual camera switch between the Chair, Speaker, and Interviewer. They then captured that camera switching into vMix by capturing the monitor display and cropping out the other participants in the filmstrip preview. Switching between the Zoom capture and intermission media in vMix they then broadcast that to a public YouTube livestream for audience members to view and discuss in the live-chat functions built into YouTube, where a member of their team was active in the public audience chat, announcing speakers, moderating impolite viewers, and answering any questions. 

Our other team member was also a muted participant of the Zoom meeting, double-checking for tech issues and uninvited guests, in the meantime capturing their own live-edit of only the Zoom meeting itself via a second monitor and a 3rd-party capture software as a backup to ensure a “un-cut” copy would be available should the first team-member run into issues.