The NDI® protocol from NewTek is a way to publish and receive audio / video streams over a network as a way to share live feeds between systems. From within VDMX, any number of video streams can be both output to the network and input from other applications.

In this tutorial we'll looking at taking layers in VDMX and publishing them for other NDI® enabled software to access. When finished you may want to move on to the tutorial covering receiving NDI® audio / video streams in VDMX.

Tip: For a quick demonstration try the "NDI® Output Example" option from the Templates menu in VDMX.

Publishing NDI® Audio / Video Streams

The NDI® Output plugin can be used to publish video and audio streams from VDMX to other client software and devices that support the protocol. Like other plugins, you can add them to your project from the Plugins section of the Workspace Inspector. This process can be repeated for as many video streams as your system and network bandwidth can handle.

Step 1: Add NDI® Output plugin to a project from Workspace Inspector.

Step 2: Select desired video stream and optional audio device to publish. If needed adjust any options in the plugin inspector.

Step 3: Video stream can be received by other software on the local network.

Note: While NDI® can be used to send video streams between applications on the same computer, to get the best performance and quality it is typically best to use the Syphon Output plugin when possible.

Plugin Settings

From the main NDI® Output plugin interface you can adjust the following settings:

Video Source: Sets which video stream from VDMX is published.
Black: Overrides the current output with a black frame of the same resolution.
Audio Source: Sets the audio input device that is streamed along with the video.
Mute: Overrides the current audio output with silence.

From the inspector panel additional options for NDI® publishing can be set:

Alpha: Enables sending of alpha channel with the stream. Turning this on increases the bandwidth used for the stream.
Send as RGB: Enables using the higher quality RGB mode for sending. Turning this on increases the bandwidth used for the stream.
Crop (left/right/top/base): Set the number of pixels to crop off from the incoming video signal before publishing.
Resize: Optionally resize the video stream before it is published.
Throttle FPS: Optionally limit the rate at which video is published in frames per second.

Tip: From the VDMX Preferences under the NDI® tab you can enter a list of remote sources outside of your local network to connect to.