skip to Main Content

Interconnecting Jitsi Video Bridge, ZipDX & YouTube Live – Part 2

If my first approach was too much for my desktop, then perhaps I could split the workload between my desktop and my laptop. This presents a different set of problems, but ultimately makes the process more robust.

JVB-onX1C-to-Desktop-to-YouTube

In this arrangement my laptop joins the JVB session. It’s running VoiceMeeter, Chrome & Bria. It provides the audio mix-minus feeds.

VoiceMeeter-JVB-Bria-HP-Flow

In this instance I set VoiceMeeter to also send an audio stream to the DisplayPort output. That way my audio & the audio from the JVB session would get to Wirecast, and onward to YouTube.

The DisplayPort output of the laptop is fed to the AVerMedia Game Broadcaster HD HDMI capture card in my desktop. Wirecast encodes the stream and feeds it to YouTube Live.

The laptop, a Lenovo X1 Carbon circa 2013, was connected to its USB 3.0 docking station, which allowed the use of a wired Ethernet connection. It also allowed the use of various USB attached peripherals, including an external Logitech C920 webcam. The Logitech webcam is vastly superior to the built-in webcam.

My standard practice to this point was to use Wirecast to perform the VUC intro sequence. That practice started in April 2014 with VUC486 as a way to more formally acknowledge our sponsors.

Since in this new arrangement Wirecast was only feeding YouTube Live, the participants on JVB did not see the intro sequence. When I rolled the intro music & VO from the player function in VoiceMeeter on the laptop the participants on JVB hear it, so at least had an audible clue as to the start of the show.

In a subsequent event, where I again used this arrangement, I added the opening title sequence using SparkoCam on the laptop. That time everyone got to see & hear the opening, which makes for a more fluid start to the recording.

Splitting the workload between the two systems did improve the reliability with respect to YouTube Live events. However, my laptop is not the speediest of computers. It’s CPU (i5-3427U) and graphics (intel HD Graphics 4000) are better suited to MS Office than video production. JVB still presents a considerable load. At least Wirecast on the desktop, relieved of the JVB process, was reliably able to pass the encoded stream to YouTube Live.

This arrangement definitely works better that loading everything onto a single system. We used it twice with VUC calls. Since then we’ve not been making as much use of JVB.

Of course, the Jitsi Project was recently bought by Atlassian. That transition will see Emil moving his family from Bulgaria to Austin, TX. I hope that we can meet over beers & BBQ some day soon…once the dust has settled.

Back To Top