Developing a User-Friendly Telestrator System for Live Production

Before I began researching other telestrators I learned about the features of the Ithaca College telestrator and ways I would like to improve the setup.

The Current Setup

We have a touch sensitive TV sized monitor controlling a drawing software with a green background in full screen. The output from the computer was converted to SDI, routed to the Grass Valley Karrera switcher, and the signal being chroma keyed on top of a playback source. The combined signal would then be routed back to the touch sensitive monitor so the user could see the drawings on screen. The commands to clear the drawings where controlled by of screen with a keyboard.

The Issues

• Not portable

• Unreliable

• Time consuming to setup

• The user could not control which clip was playing or clear their drawings

• Not very appealing on camera

My Goals

• User to control drawings and clips from an iPad with potential for live feed inputs

• Portable

• Easy setup

• User-friendly

• Free

My Implementation

I began researching different software. I found various somewhat free solutions but came with limitations since it was free. I came across this script from exeldro via GitHub. I imported the "whiteboard.lua" script into OBS and then added a whiteboard source to a scene. This script would allow you to draw on the full screen/windowed projector window of preview/program scene depending on if you are in studio mode.

To connect the feed to the switcher I connected a Blackmagic HDMI to SDI from my laptop as a secondary screen with a full screen window from OBS. To this point it would allow me to draw but there was no easy way to erase the drawing, change the color, or the clips in que.

After creating hotkeys in OBS for pause, next clip, clear board, and change color I installed Bitfoucs Companion to create custom web buttons.

To control from an iPad, I installed RealVNC. RealVNC is a remote desktop client that runs a server on the computer to then be accessed via viewer on the iPad. This solution made clips somewhat laggy for direct playback but was suitable for when clips were paused since the user could clearly see what they were telestrating on.

iPad View

Testing

The telestrator made its debut on Ithaca College Television's show Sports Final. It was utilized to break down Cornell Hockey clips.

The telestrator was also featured on Ithaca College Television's show Bombers Live. Allowing the color commentator to draw directly onto the broadcast feed. This required some modification as the color commentator was only provided a green screen scene to draw on so the feed could be chroma keyed in the switcher. It was configured this way so there wasn't a playback loop of program. To allow the color commentator to see the program feed in the future would be to have OBS in studio mode with the program scene having a capture card input of the broadcast with a whiteboard source. In the preview scene would be a green screen with a whiteboard source and would have a full screen window on the secondary display via Blackmagic HDMI to SDI.

Areas To Still Improve

To reduce the lag a segmented network for the laptop and iPad may improve responsiveness. Another area is clip control so that they can be slowed down. Currently they can only be controlled by pausing/playing or the slide bar in OBS.