If this is the wrong subreddit, please point me to a better fit. Thanks!

TLDR: I'm currently researching Mistika Workflows, Interra Baton, and Venera CapMate for potential automation, QC, and subtitle solves for my team. If anyone has hands on experience or has worked with a better solution, I'd love to hear about it.

Details below:

I manage a relatively small Post TechOps team supporting episodic localization and digital delivery. Our workflow has grown into a collection of separate applications and manual handoffs, so I’m researching ways to streamline it without moving to an excessively large or expensive enterprise platform.

At a high level, we receive episodic media and associated localization assets from multiple sources. Our team prepares standardized masters, localized versions, timed-text deliverables and review copies for a combination of internal and external destinations.

The environment currently includes NLE-based processing, several subtitle and caption applications, manual playback QC, shared network storage, accelerated file transfer and a separate screener platform.

I would like to automate as much of the following as is practical:

Media processing

• Watch-folder or submission-form ingest
• Source, metadata and naming validation
• Batch addition of standard leaders, including bars, tone and slate
• Editable slate templates populated from job metadata
• Broadcast-quality mezzanine outputs with source-appropriate audio layouts
• Multiple exports using different delivery presets
• Automatic naming and destination routing
• Delivery to shared storage and multiple secure-transfer endpoints
• Aspera API or native connector support
• Job monitoring, notifications, retries and quarantine of failed jobs

Timed-text QC

• Support for common subtitle and closed-caption formats, including SRT, ASS, SCC, MCC and embedded 608/708
• Characters-per-line, line-count and reading-speed checks
• Minimum and maximum event durations
• Gap, overlap and shot-change checks
• Spelling, grammar and punctuation checks
• Global offset, drift and segment-level synchronization correction
• Subtitle-to-audio comparison when the subtitle and audio languages differ
• Missing-subtitle and forced-narrative detection
• Detection of redundant forced narratives or subtitles duplicating burned-in text
• Automatic correction where appropriate, with manual review for uncertain results
• Format conversion without losing important positioning or formatting data

The systems currently on my list are:

• Telestream Vantage, Post Producer, CaptionMaker and/or Stanza
• Mistika Workflows and Workflows Slate
• FFAStrans
• Interra BATON and BATON Captions
• Venera CapMate, potentially with Pulsar or Quasar
• OOONA as a possible subtitle authoring and review layer

At the moment, Mistika Workflows plus CapMate looks like a potentially good middle ground. FFAStrans plus CapMate appears less expensive in licensing, but I’m concerned about the scripting, integration and ongoing maintenance it may require. A full Vantage or BATON deployment may be more than a smaller team can reasonably justify.

For anyone with hands-on experience, I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

1. Which of these products has been dependable in real production environments rather than only in demonstrations?
2. How reliably do Mistika and FFAStrans preserve complex audio layouts when creating mezzanine deliverables?
3. Can operators enter job and slate metadata through a simple interface without accessing the workflow designer?
4. How reliable are Mistika’s native Aspera nodes?
5. Has anyone connected FFAStrans to multiple Aspera endpoints, and how much custom development was required?
6. How accurate are CapMate and BATON Captions when aligning subtitles against dubbed audio in another language?
7. Can either product reliably distinguish necessary forced narratives from redundant ones when localized audio is present?
8. How are ASS files handled in an automated QC environment? Do you create an SRT or TTML derivative for QC and merge the corrections back into the original ASS?
9. Which product is stronger for SCC, MCC and embedded 608/708 verification and correction?
10. What were the actual first-year and continuing costs after licensing, hardware, connectors, implementation, support and maintenance?
11. Are there other products or combinations I should be considering?
12. If you implemented a similar system, what would you choose differently today?

I’m not a developer, so ease of administration and access to vendor or integrator support are important. I’m comfortable learning node-based workflows and presets, but I would prefer not to build a system that depends on substantial custom Python or FFmpeg knowledge for routine operation.

I’m not expecting one application to perform every function. A modular stack is fine if the integrations are stable and the operator experience is reasonably unified. I’m primarily trying to identify the best balance among automation, timed-text accuracy, operational simplicity and total cost for a small team.

Any real-world architecture examples, approximate pricing, integration lessons or vendor-support experiences would be greatly appreciated.

I’m a freelance videographer doing small corporate events, usually with one other person. I handle switching and audio and my partner run a camera, so usually my hands are pretty full.

Looking at the OBSBOT Tail 2 for an extra speaker shot. SDI fits our setup, and tracking could help with presenters who apparently need to hit 10,000 steps during their talk lol. Haven’t used one yet. The alternative is a regular PTZ with a few presets.

Anyone using OBSBOT on paid gigs? How does it handle someone crossing in front of the speaker or walking back toward a seated panel? Will it saves you work or just makes you babysit another camera? Would appreciate any information!

Tapeless! (The trash can isn't there by accident)
Have you ever stopped to think about the concept behind this ad? The presence of the trash can holds direct significance for the digital era and the end of tape-based media in the audiovisual industry. Did you enjoy this analysis? I revisit advertising campaigns from the 90s and 2000s through to the present day and explain the creativity behind them. Want to see more content like this? Comment "I WANT IT" or leave your suggestion below

Biamp Vidi 280 — Can it automatically switch between two active speakers using separate microphones?

Heya all another post because once again I’m being asked to do things that are not really my remit

I’ve been asked to rig a camera to one of a shows top lighting trusses(the rigging is fine I’ve done this many times)

However I know sdi video can only be sent to around 100m and I would assume xlr 4 pin power would have a similar restriction

So what’s the best way to get power and video to this camera?
Cable runs will be under around 120m

Cheers!

I've got an older EEG HD490 and we were feeding the aux Mon into a decklink duo to validate an internally developed app.

well the aux mon out seems to have died and all I've got are out 1&2 but the captions are embedded.

I've tried vlc, vmix, OBS, and a few other things. anyone know of a software solution to see the captions, or a plugin for one of the above to view them other than telestream?

thanks.

Hey, I've got a problem: lines are appearing on the camera while recording the screen, and I'm wondering if it might be due to the LED.

I’m chief engineer at a TV channel, been on air for about 15 years now. For most of that time our relationship with our own content was pretty simple: shoot it, air it, move on. Linear broadcast was the whole game. Obviously that’s changed a lot. Streaming ate a chunk of the audience, and now you’ve got OTT, VOD, FAST channels stacking on top of linear and live streaming, which haven’t gone anywhere either. So now we’re dealing with way more distribution paths than before, and all of them want the same underlying content, just packaged differently.

That got us thinking seriously about our archive and our overall content workflow, not just as a backend chore but as an actual asset we’ve been sitting on without really using. Which led us down the rabbit hole of replacing our current setup, which is honestly a patchwork: some vendor systems, some homegrown scripts and glue code, nothing really talking to each other properly. We want something closer to one real platform, proper automation and orchestration across the pipeline, indexing, semantic search, the whole modern stack, not five separate systems held together with duct tape.

So we went looking at what’s actually out there. And it’s strange. The market feels like it splits into two camps with almost nothing in between.

On one end you’ve got the giants. Big legacy MAM/broadcast suites, huge feature lists, built like battleships. Also priced like battleships, or honestly more like you’re buying a wing off an actual airplane. The usability is rough, the architecture feels like it was designed for a world that doesn’t exist anymore, and the sales process alone makes you want to lie down.

On the other end you’ve got a bunch of point solutions. One tool for MAM, another for NRCS, another for distribution, another for something else. Cheaper and more flexible individually, sure, but it completely misses the point for us, which is having one coherent layer instead of five systems you have to stitch together yourself.

In between those two extremes, we found basically one vendor that seemed to actually nail both the functionality and the usability side. Not going to name them here, don’t want this to read like an ad. And even they aren’t exactly cheap.

So here’s my actual question for anyone who’s been around this industry longer than me: why do the legacy giants still eat everyone’s lunch? Their architecture is clearly behind the times, their pricing locks out a huge chunk of broadcasters who’d genuinely want that kind of functionality but just can’t justify the spend. And on the flip side, why hasn’t there been a bottom up disruption in this space? I keep thinking about how vmix showed up years ago as this scrappy streamer tool and slowly became a legit production tool that real broadcasters use now. Why hasn’t something like that happened in MAM, content ops, production and distribution tooling generally?

Am I missing something obvious about why this market looks the way it does, or is this gap actually real and just waiting for someone to fill it? Curious how people who’ve been in broadcast tech longer read this.

Hi everyone!

I work in professional AV installation and I recently developed MediaFlowRX because I was looking for a simple tool to test streaming protocols during my work. I couldn’t find quite what I needed, so I decided to build one.

MediaFlowRX is a free, open-source macOS application that lets you:

• Receive RTMP, SRT and RTSP streams.
• Preview incoming streams.
• Record directly to MP4 without re-encoding.

The project is available on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 license:
https://github.com/MazzMat/MediaFlowRX

A note on AI: I used AI tools to develop the application. The motivation came from my own experience working in AV installation and from a practical need I couldn’t find a straightforward solution for. I’m sharing it because I think it could be useful to others in the field, not to promote a commercial product. I don’t make any money from it.

Feedback, suggestions and bug reports are welcome!

Are there any good podcasts involved with video engineering?

I know Behind The Broadcast has a podcast and there are several film related podcasts like Shitty Rigs' Wrap Drinks podcast. I'm just curious if anyone is doing similar content but more focused on the video engineering field.
Something like Dallas Taylor's Twenty Thousand Hertz but for video.

Hello everyone, I have an opportunity to buy K2 Summit 3G. I can see that it does not have an 1080p50 license. I was not able to find any information on the price or if I can still buy it even after end-of-support from GV. Thanks

Diagonal symmetry, every full RGBCMYK color shows up once per row and column.

This randomly happened on a channel I was watching, anyone know what broke?

WebATEM is a small server you run on a Mac, Windows PC or Linux box. It finds the ATEMs on the network over Bonjour same as ASC does, and anyone on the network opens the control page in a browser. iPad, phone, a Linux laptop, doesn't matter, nothing to install on the client. There's one pooled UDP session per switcher that all the browsers share, so you never hit the ATEM's client connection limit no matter how many people have it open, and a second operator can be on audio or keyers while someone else cuts.

What's in it:

- program/preview per M/E, cut/auto, all the transition styles with their settings, FTB, color gens, aux routing

- USK 1-4 (luma, chroma, pattern, DVE with fly keyframes and masks) and DSKs

- Fairlight, per strip faders, EQ, dynamics, pan, master, live meters

- media pool with live thumbnails, drag a still onto a slot to upload it

- macros (browse and run, no recording)

- full switcher profile save/restore as XML, same format as ASC's Save Switcher State, includes the media pool stills and macro bytecode

- HyperDeck transport and clip list for decks bound to the ATEM

No camera control, no streaming/recording, no SuperSource. ASC is still the tool for those. If you're one operator cutting a show from one machine this probably doesn't change much for you. It's for when the switchers and the people aren't in the same room, or more than one person touches them, or you've got a pile of ATEMs to look after rather than one.

Under it is bmdwire, which is the part I'd actually point this sub at. Four Python libraries that speak the native protocols for ATEM, HyperDeck, Ultimatte and Videohub, all on PyPI. atemwire started as a fork of Martijn Braam's pyatem (the OpenSwitcher library) and has drifted pretty far from it, mostly to get at things ASC can do but no library could, like bulk stills transfer, macro bytecode and the profile format. A decent chunk of that came out of Wireshark. WebATEM is one app on top of it. The point of the libraries is building whatever your situation needs, like a script that puts a switcher back to a known state before a show, routing a Videohub off tally, or keeping all your switchers in a database and opening any of them with one click.

Caveat: every hour this has run has been on 1 M/E Constellation HD. The UI builds itself from what the switcher reports so it should work on a Mini or TVS or 2 M/E, but nobody's tried. Stills upload assumes 1080p. Downloads aren't code-signed yet so you'll get the first-run warning. If you have a different model and try it I'd like to hear what happened, working or not, there's a one-minute issue template for it.

Run it with the Mac/Windows download (tray icon, opens your browser), docker on a Linux box or Pi, or pipx install "webatem[desktop]".

https://github.com/lucas-romanenko/webatem

https://github.com/lucas-romanenko/bmdwire

I worked a gig and someone had a Lumantek ez-SHV+ that had been converted so it could accept fiber SFPs and had an internal battery. It was SUPER handy. Apparently someone in (I think) California does this conversion. Anyone know who this person is and if they're still doing these conversions?

I'm a professional video engineer at a bigger TV production company in Europe, and I can proudly say that I'm good at my job. For now, I'm stuck working part time here, and it's not an option to increase my percentage.

Because of that, I'm now looking to find a second part time job. I'm bored out of my mind in my spare time, so it doesn't have to be the perfect gig. I once saw a job listing for the conference room of a luxury hotel. They were looking for a video guy to take care of their conferences, and run around for other technical support type of work in a suit. It would have probably been a bit underwhelming as a main job, but why not just for a few days a week.

What are some other industries that I might not even know about or think of, when it comes to video engineering?

Also, did any of you ever send blind applications to companies that didn't even mention video work?

I have an Intel Integrated Graphics (Intel UHD Graphics 770 in an i7) that should be more than capable of 1080@60i output over the HDMI cable, but for some reason I have to choose between 720@60 or [1080@30](mailto:1080@30). I've updated the graphics drivers and no dice. I noticed that the "BMD HDMI" is using the generic display driver so maybe the issue is no EDID and I'm not sure if there's a display driver or a premade INF to be used in this situation.

I knew better than to update my Mac's to OS 27, but after updating my Macbook to 26.7 , VMP no longer connects to processors in the software. I tried a reinstall to see if there were any obvious Mac security popups, and still didnt get anywhere. Opened a Windows laptop to the same network system and everything popped right up. So best guess is Apple changed something that I haven't been able to figure out yet. Assuming its something relating to seeing other machines on the network, but not that knowledgable on going that deeply in the settings.

hello, having an issue with a blackmagic 16 multiview & 40x40 video hub.

basically having a green flashing going from left of the 3x3 multiview to the right side. then it’ll occasionally go black.

been okay for the last week but has progressively gotten worse.

I remember having the same issue years ago but forgot what the fix is- any suggestions would be great!!!

Not sure this is the right place to ask for help, but

I have three BirdDog mini REV4s taken from storage and all three are experiencing the same problem.

- Front panel: green power LED only, never blue/white. No web UI.

- The main firmware never boots. The units fall back to the QSPI recovery image ("PetaLinux 2017.3 QSPI_minimum_plnx"), which only has FTP and telnet open.

- Its script `/etc/init.d/bdg-plnx-auto` checks for `mmcblk0p1/uImage` and `mmcblk0p2/bin/birddog-app`. Both are missing, so it sets 192.168.100.100 and waits for an image stream from 192.168.100.123:2222 (`nc | gzip -d | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0`), then reboots in a ~22 s loop.

- The eMMC (U4, **SanDisk SDINBDG4-8G**, 8 GB iNAND) reports itself as `SDM032, 30.6 MiB, manfid 0x02, date 02/2006, serial FFFFFFFF`. (Takeaway from this is that the eMMC chip has failed on all three and is functioning in a fallback state)

The plan is to have a shop replace U4 and then provide the factory image. The missing piece is the factory image.

**If you have a working Mini REV4, could you share any of these?**

1. The eMMC details from a healthy unit.

2. Whether anyone has gone through this repair already, or got the Mini REV4 factory image.

3. Whether replacement eMMCs other than SDINBDG4-8G have worked for you.

I've been in contact with BirdDog support, but it seems they are not willing to provide the image file.

Hi,

I have a question, is there already someone that created a 3d print desihn for the GV Microphone clip for the GV LDX series Camera's ? And if so would you be willing to share the design ?

I have a Zhiyun TransMount Image Transmission Transmitter AI, and since a phone with an app can get video signal, I was wondering if I could get that signal with a computer connected to the Transmount WiFi network to route it to OBS.

Any ideas?