Hello All!

We use Easyworship on a PC with Intel HD graphics builtin to a Skylake i7. We make 3 displays for the primary / user interface, foldback, and projection.

We use vMix for internal CCTV and streaming (on a seperate machine). I use vMix desktop capture on the EW computer in order to make the "Live" output available as an input in vMix over NDI. I currently use the overlay channel to do a picture in picture of our Live output with our camera (camera is main window, lyrics are PIP). I would love to be able to use the Alpha channel feature in EW to overlay the lyrics instead.

The challenge is that I am out of physical display outputs on the main PC, so I do not have one to assign to the alpha channel. I also do not have any HDMI capture capability on the vMix computer in order to receive the alpha channel (our camera is a usb webcam for now, not great but it is proving my concept and may open the door to funds for better video).

There is already a feature request to add NDI support to EW (https://support.easyworship.com/support ... 6000043642). I would like to see the ability for EW to natively make the Live, Foldback, and Alpha channel outputs available over NDI without the use of third party software (like the desktop capture). It would also be very helpful if I could make use of the Alpha channel over NDI without it having a physical output assigned.

Does anyone else have any opinions on this? Anyone have any workarounds I could use to make this work? If I could create a virtual display device to assign the alpha channel to, then i might be able to pick that up in vMix over NDI. But I have not found any software that lets me create a virtual display for outputting with EW.

Any helpful thoughts or discussion is appreciated.. Thanks!

Further to my comments above, I have used NDI desktop capture to capture and display song text over live video.
Set up a green screen background as your EW background then in VMix, use the chroma key to filter out the green screen leaving only the text behind. Use one of the overlay setting in VMix then to place the text over the live video in the desired location.
This worked very well for a live stream I once did however I was not outputting EW to the live screen in the venue. That came from VMix, so VMix was streaming AND projecting at the same time.

Here's another thought: You can download NewTek's AirSend Updater tool. Install it onto your EW machine, then choose NewTek AirSend as your main output from the drop down list in EW6's Options screen. and it should make EW6's output directly compatible with NDI.

You can get the tool here: [url:1anyye9b]http://pages.newtek.com/NDI-Upgrader-Download.html

I was just testing this a few days ago on a new Windows 7 install for my EW machine, and it showed scripture text as an overlay on top of my live video in Vmix. I'll have to try it again with song lyrics to see if that works.

I am using VMix to record/livestream church sermons but my PC has 5 HDMI input cards. BlackMagic intensity Pro/4k plus Avermedia game broadcaster cards. All can capture HDMI at 1080P.

I also pick up the output of EW via the desktop capture which gives me the ability to do a full screen or picture in picture of the pastors PowerPoint.

Of course, these inputs cards are all internally mounted in a desktop PC, but I do have other devices.

I have a Blackmagic Intensty Shuttle - USB 3 version and a Thunderbolt version which I use with my laptop giving me two HD inputs. I am using this in the church hall for a series of programs and putting this video live on screen at certain times in the program. These devices can be purchased new or used ones are often available on eBay. Driver are downloaded from BlackMagic.

I also have another device which is a driverless USB3 capture HDMI device. It just plugs into a USB 3 port, connect your HDMI camera and will be instantly seen in VMix as a camera input. While it works very nicely, it does have some latency and I would not want to use it for live video on a screen in the same room as the presenter.

Here's a thought about how you can get around that physical output limitation on your main PC. If you have an iPad handy, there are apps that will allow you to set it up as an external monitor for your computer. Some apps do this over a shared wireless network, and others do a wired configuration using the iPad's USB cable. I have tested a couple, and Splashtop's Wired XDisplay works fairly well (right now, it's about $5 in the App Store). As a matter of fact, I just started using the trial of Vmix 19, and I sent its output to my iPad Air configured as a 2nd monitor via XDisplay Wired. You'll just have to load a small companion app on the PC to complete the iPad's connection as an external monitor via USB.

Now that I think of it, a USB external monitor would meet the same need (but it might be a bit more likely that you've got access to an iPad instead). Hope this helps.