NDI as Remote Video Preview Device

Flame, Flame Assist, and Flare support the NDI® protocol developed by NewTek. This documentation highlights what is supported by the SDK version 6.x.

Streaming with NDI

With NDI, you can stream audio and video across a network. It's low-latency, and essentially behaves like video card, allowing you to broadcast the output across your network.

The broadcast is an 10-bit compressed stream, @ up to UDHTV/60p, enough for monitoring and review. For more details, see the NDI® website.

Note: Not all applications and hardware solutions support 10-bit decoding; 10-bit NDI output was validated with BirdDog 4K 12G decoder, which supports 10-bit encoding & decoding.

Setting up Flame for NDI broadcast

Follow these steps to set up Flame for NDI broadcasting.

Open the Setup application.
Open the General tab.
Set Video Device and Audio Device to NDI.
Open the Preview menu.
Set Preview Device to NDI to select it as you broadcast output.
Select a timing and resolution for the broadcast output. The quality of your network should dictate your resolution and timing choices.
Click Apply, and close the Setup application.

Viewing an NDI Broadcast

Anyone on the same network as the Flame Family network can view an NDI broadcast.

To view an NDI broadcast, one needs:

NDI Video Monitor (macOS) or NDI Studio Monitor (Windows), a product from Newtek, and both part of the NDI Tools. It must be installed on a macOS or Windows workstation.
Access to the same network as the Flame workstation.

To view the broadcast:

Start NDI Video Monitor (macOS) or NDI Studio Monitor (Windows).
From the application menu, select an NDI stream.

It detects any NDI stream on the network. If you can't see your broadcast, then the broadcaster and the receiver are not on the same network.

Note: The NDI Tools are supported on macOS and Windows, not Linux. That means the stream can be broadcast from a Linux or macOS workstation, but can be viewed only on macOS or Windows, unless you are using an NDI-compatible third-party monitoring application.

Full Range vs Legal Range

NDI only supports the YCbCr 4:2:2 colour space. RGB is not supported.

You can select whether to use the Full range or Legal range in the Video Monitoring Preferences.

Viewing an NDI Broadcast over the Public Internet

Refer to the NDI Tools for solutions allowing you to broadcast the stream over the public internet.

Third-party applications can treat the NDI signal as any video signal. For example, OBS, Skype, and Zoom allow remote users to monitor your work. Cloud-based services like SetStream also offer extended broadcast possibilities.

AVIO—NDI Downmix

The audio mixdown over an NDI stream can be set from the Audio Preferences.

Note: If you are using OBS with NDI, do not select Monitor 16 Tracks: this option crashes OBS on macOS, and prevents OBS from playing back audio on Windows and Linux.