Updating CasparCG Setup Videos

Hey Everyone,

I would like to get a few opinions on re-doing some of the getting started material for CasparCG. Mainly the installation and HTML setup videos. @hummelstrand made some great content over 8 years ago and these are primarily the ones I would be looking update. Mainly CasparCG 2.0 Intro and Dynamic Template w/ Video And Audio (Change this to HTML). I would also make sure to throw in the great information from @indr which can be found here.

Please leave your thoughts, ideas, or mention if you want to be involved! Thank you :grinning:

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Yes, I have been thinking about that for a while but I havenā€™t gotten down how to make something like that without it ending up as a basic programming course or as an advanced course for programmers.

I think the target audience is a first beginner with CasparCG that is unlikely to have programming experience but then I honestly donā€™t know what tools would be fit for that level of knowledge.

Yes, you are right. But in the more recent versions of Caspar there is that PSD producer, that can do simple templates without too much programming. What about that?

Or a good tutorial, with exampes, for exporting from After Effects to HTML using BodyMovin. Probably somebody has the boilerplate code for that.

Yeah, thereā€™s definitely possibilities out there but thereā€™s pros and cons to all of them and thatā€™s why I have never gotten further than thinking about making a ā€œgetting startedā€

I think it is safe to assume that anyone who is serious about creating dynamic graphics packages are going to need to know the basics of HTML, CSS, and JS. If they donā€™t and donā€™t want to take the time to learn, then the they are going to end up looking into a plug and play solution from VizRT or Chryon. And of course, this will come at a cost. Correct me if I way off but, my guess is the majority of individuals interested in CasparCG are people who are on a budget and are aware that to get a cheap, high quality solution; it is going to take some time and effort.

Those are who I think would be the main target for the guide. And the overall goal wouldnā€™t be to take someone who has zero knowledge and make them a master animator but, to provide a solid foundation of the CasparCG ecosystem and provide them all the resources to get them anywhere.

Thoughts gentlemen? :slight_smile:

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The problem is to define, what is basic knowledge. If that question is clear, I agree.

Most user problems are related to the config. A good explanation of the config and options should be #1 on the list. Heck! Iā€™d say half of those who test out CCG give up when they see the config!

I agree doing a videotutorial about the config would be useful for beginners. But the for which version, 1,9, 2.2 or 2.3. They all differ in some aspect. Also I think I have downloaded from somewhere (getting old, dont remember from where) quite a large package of different config-files.
I think we could assume that most people first want to try CasparGC out with a screen consumer, if they like it then they probably will need either a Duo2 or NDI.
For the 2.0.7 the frontend helped a lot of beginners getting started (including myself), so I was thinking checking out the CasparLaucher that @rrebuffo has made and see how that works with different versions. Also I think it is a small problem that the newest download on casparcg.com is from 2015. You can still see that there are people starting using the 2.0.7 version even today.

I think we could go a few different routes with this. I personally used a mixture of Lynda.com and Treehouse to get the basics down but those are pay to use services so it isnā€™t an option for everyone.

After a quick google search I found this site, Donā€™t Fear the Internet. I canā€™t vouch for for any of the content since I haveā€™t seen it but, it looks like it may be a good free option for beginners. It does not cover JavaScript though so maybe something like this would cover that side, learn-js.org?

In response to @markusnygard, is there any reason we could only support the most recent stable version? I know there are reasons to downgrade but, in the future, this shouldnā€™t be the case right?

Even if this just turned into a repository of references, that would still be a step in the right direction!

For me the biggest reason for not do (for now) do tutorial for the 2.2 Stable is the lack of NDI support. Since both vMix and Tricaster now are updated to NDI4 and NDI4 doesnt understand the sound from iVGA. For me this is a big issue.

Please excuse my lack of OSC knowledge but, would this fall into a advanced topic like setting up a web socket server for graphics to communicate with a client would be? Also, if the implantation of OSC from version to version is going to remain fairly consistent, it may be worth mentioning it is not functional but, explain how it works and demo on an older server version.

In my opinion, it would be just as beneficial to provide all the OSC resources to understand the technology and then let the user decide how to proceed. If they have gotten that far, they can most likely figure out how to downgrade. Please let me know you thoughts!

Also, has anyone used JS to process and manage OSC commands? Found this library and it looks pretty cool! Just uses a web socket server to communicate with the Caspar OSC port.

This is off topic.

OSC is available in all versions of CCG since 2.0.something. Some paths have changed from time to time and they way it is emitted has changed also. But mostly itā€™s been the same, just with additions.

Iā€™d say 90% of CCG related projects that use OSC use osc.js. This might give you some inspiration: https://github.com/hreinnbeck/casparcg-osc2websockets-monitor

I think for a basic introduction we should concentrate on the setup, including the basic of the config and the creation of simple templates. So that a beginner has a clue were to start. If that has been made, we can add more advanced stuff.

The problem with these kind of stuff is, that if you want to do everything you will end up doing nothing, because you will need a lot of time to prepare and record all these tutorials. So a step by step approach, starting from the basic at the lowest possible level should be the priority. For me OSC belongs to the topics for very advanced users, not even intermediate.

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Before any recording takes place, I think there should be a written markdown version of the guide. From there the tutorials would simply be video recreations of the written guide.

I threw together a repo on GitHub, found here, with an example of the introduction to the written guide and potentially an outline of what is covered. Thoughts everyone?

In my own experience a few years ago trying to get started using CasparCG I found it difficult to understand at an early instance how the server is devised in the first place:

  • How the producers work, how the server communicates to them and how they communicate back to the server.
  • Each producerā€™s capabilities and limitations.
  • How the server-client paradigm works, what is laid out that way and what isnā€™t.
  • How the official client implements all that. What depends on the server and whatā€™s standalone (like ATEM and camera controls)
  • What data the server handles: Datasets, template data (mostly deprecated or unused), media library, status data requests, etc. Also how the the clients are supposed to lean on that.
  • Channels, Layers and consumers. I think this is the easiest part to understand but I saw people struggle to get that right.

Regarding templates and media in general, in addition to what I wrote above:

  • How the development of templates for the producers must be approached. How are we supposed to make them? Is there an IDE? Why is there a template generator in the flash producer? (This is slowly and steadily fading away anyways but itā€™s good to note that here to avoid further confusion with new features).
  • AMCP protocol to control videos and templates. How it works, what it can and canā€™t do.
  • HTML producer workflow, limitations at the moment and workarounds. I think Retoā€™s guides are fantastic.
  • OSC brief introduction and documentation to this specific implementation. Also changes to each server version. This is vital, a small change in this protocol can break a whole client or automation.

I understand CasparCG is the response to a very specific need and was meant to be used in house but the community and the interest in the project has grown very much and the ā€œsupportā€ for end-users has not caught up the pace.
I noted new users constantly get confused with workflows and versions and overall notions surrounding all these concerns. Many users go back to the same questions over and over in the forum and it would be nice if the time spent answering those questions would be used to write a quick article welcoming new users.
If I had ordered and useful documentation on these topics It would have saved me a couple of years of ā€œreverse engineeringā€ protocols and workflows and asking what now seem like very obvious questions.

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I agree with rrebuffo, community more needs in-detail higher level perspective of Caspar than hands-on tutorials. It has to be intimidating for the beginner to grasp why is something implemented in Caspar the way it is, what are the limitations, what are best practices for each use case, etc.

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It looks like we are all in agree that chapter 1 is going to be an overview of CasparCG and itā€™s capabilities. I also think it is realistic to explain the time commitment to get up and running with CapsarCG and the time commitment for actually developing broadcast level graphics. I donā€™t want to scare any new users away but, do want to make sure a new user knows that this is more than a few hour endeavor.

Do we want to move this thread over to Slack? That way this thread doesnā€™t get to be 100s of replies long about all different topics. Maybe we can make a slack channel on the CapsarCG Slack Workspace for Guide Development? Then we can keep track of each chapter with Trello? That way anyone who is working on a chapter doesnā€™t need to see anyone elseā€™s work in the other chapters unless they want to.

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there are also a lot of chinese user, maybe i can help translating the subtitle to chinese. I still remembered that I took almost 15days test before the CG first worked and display something.

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Thank you to @hreinnbeck for creating the Slack Channel. Please join the official CasparCG Slack work space here and then join the #guide-development channel by clicking on ā€˜Channelsā€™ on the left side of the app ( should be above #dev ).

HTML Guide Written - Ready for Review

Hello Everyone!

Over the pasted month or so, a few of use wrote out the HTML guide. It did end up including a few server related topics but, everything covered is the minimum to begin development.

Please feel free to review and leave some comments on the guide! The more input, the better :slight_smile:

Guide Link

GitHub Repo w/ finished graphic

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