WebCast solution without sound cards

Hi Arieli!

Breakaway Live will be able to do it. I hadn’t planned for more than 4 instances, but I suppose I could do 8. 🙂

///Leif

Hi Arieli!

I’ve just started creating it, I should have a beta in a few weeks.

There will be a multiple instance version, where you can simply run multiple copies, and you can create as many pipelines as you need to feed the audio into each instance. Breakaway Live will have DSP plug-in support just like Breakaway Broadcast, so you’ll be able to call encoder plug-ins from each instance.

///Leif

Won’t be long. I’ve made very good progress on the project, I might have a beta in the next couple of days.

///Leif

Hey Patrick! Long time no see 🙂.

The encoder, is it built into SAM, is it a DSP plug-in, or is it a standalone application?

If it’s one of the two former, you should be able to feed it from Breakaway Live.

What have you tried so far?

///Leif

Patrick, I don’t see the sound going out of SAM. SAM’s output is disabled. How is the audio supposed to get into Breakaway?

I do see Breakaway’s output going into SAM’s encoder, but that won’t help unless Breakaway sees some audio 😉.

What happens if you select Breakaway Pipeline 1 as the Output Driver in SAM?

Also, I would absolutely recommend using Kernel Streaming in Breakaway, for both Input and Output. That way, Breakaway can talk to the pipeline driver directly, without having to go through windows audio subsystem.

///Leif

I have a solution!

It took a while (all day actually).

I’ve extended my LiveLink protocol — and made a LiveLink DSP plug-in.

This allows you to load a DSP plug-in inside SAM (or any other program that feeds DSP plug-ins with a steady stream of data), and the audio will magically be transported to Breakaway Live, processed, and transported back!

This plug-in also works with Winamp, but not well — it is designed for a steady stream of audio, and there will be glitches when starting or stopping a stream. It also does not support changing the sample rate on the fly. It is designed to be used with studio software only.

Here’s how you use it:

In Breakaway Live I/O configuration:

• Download Breakaway Live 0.90.68 beta — http://www.claessonedwards.com/beta/bre … 8_beta.exe
• Select Breakaway Pipeline 1 as the Input. (Make sure to use Kernel Streaming — otherwise you won’t see the pipeline in remote desktop.)
  You won’t actually be sending any audio to this pipeline — but we have to have an input device.
• Select "Disabled" as the output.
• For the Input sampling rate, select the same sample rate you will be using in SAM! This is very important, or the processing will literally run at the wrong rate.

In SAM:

• Download [attachment=0:1pzx1kcu]livelink_plugins.zip[/attachment:1pzx1kcu] and unzip it to SAM’s plugin folder.
• Bypass AGCs for all channels. (I just heard it for the first time today. I am at a loss for words!)
• In the Mixer section, select the LiveLink plug-ins for the Breakaway Live instance you want to use.
• If you see red flashing meters, that means you’re clipping the input. Turn down the volume of both decks a few dB (Breakaway will boost it back up, don’t worry), then play some sound effect over the music and make sure it doesn’t clip. If it does, turn down that volume as well. You want to make sure it *never ever* clips on the input — it yields no benefit, and only adds distortions.
• In the encoder, select source "Audio Pipeline".

That should do it!

The Breakaway Pipeline is only used as a placeholder. Breakaway Live is able to see the pipeline despite RDP, due to the fact that Breakaway products support Kernel Streaming.

However, the actual audio does not go through the Breakaway Pipeline, and does not go through windows audio drivers — instead it goes through my proprietary LiveLink audio transport protocol (technically, through memory-mapped files, mutexes and events). This way, we completely bypass the RDP audio driver misery.

Starting order does not matter. If you close Breakaway Live while SAM is running, the DSP plug-in will still pass (original) audio. When you start up Breakaway Live again, you get processed audio again.

By the way, we have decided on multi-instance pricing:

Single instance $129
Dual instance $219
Four instances $399
Eight instances: $699

Pretty affordable compared to PCI cards, eh? 🙂

Let me know how it works. This is highly beta — I literally just wrote the code, and tested with one instance of SAM. Test on a test machine, not the production machine!

Best regards,
///Leif