Using Casparcg on E-sports shows : Feedback and technical details

Hey all. I take some time to give feedback to casparcg developers.
First of all, thank you for this awesome tool we use since few years on almost all shows we produce.
I’m the lead developer around this topic at ZQSD Productions in France, and I’ll explain how we use it.

We don’t use CasparCG for the final Playout (Currently VMIX) because of few technical details, one being we prefer a really easy interface to be able to react better in emergency, and VMIX does that really well. (With easy Titles, Cut, Stinger, Streaming, Records etc). We use CasparCG for all the other components.
Usually we configure two casparcg servers with one channel each.

  • The first one is used to handle dynamic images / templates / text / scores that are send through NDI (or ATEM fill+key) to the final PLayout for TV, Stream and Main screen on stage.
  • The second one is used to handle all other LED screens on stage, sometimes more than 10 screens.

Talking more about the first one, we intensively use HTML templates with HTML5 + Javascript with some particular points coming from the e-sport field. E-sport mostly allows to have games with dynamic data which can be read from the game (via many different ways from Image analysis in real time to reading the game API in real time) to then be sent to CasparCG using AMCP commands. Javascript & HTML will handle smooth transitions between graphics and texts as soon as the data is updated through AMCP.
We use AutoIt a lot for fast and easy development, I shared my program on the old forum but you can still find a partial APi on the AutoIt forum : https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/189781-udf-casparcg-amcp-21/

The second server is used in combination with our LED screens contrator with which who we work together since years, idea is to define a layout from which they 'll split to the different screens. Example below.


CasparCG few transforms, and we’re done. On this video you can see that with Trackmania game for example this is how we handle the Warmup, start, Green-orange-Green countdowns and current checkpoints IG from a PHP script on the TM server to Casparcg :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QunpHZPLR5c&feature=youtu.be

We also use a lot the ATEM library in the official client, would be more interesting if the server could do it itself though, I need to dev it on my clients sadly, and this is something VMIX and other commercial tools don’t have, which makes casparcg ahead.

We still have a lot to learn , but we’re on it :slight_smile:
I’m there if you have any questions.

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This is a really interesting setup, but out of my personal experience I’d recommend you to migrate out of vMix if possible, mainly because of its lack of programmable versatility. In fact, in a hurry I had to hack some sort of interface for controlling an ATEM mixer from vMix in a really basic way (preview input, cut transition) using a middleman with NodeJS. If it serves your needs I can share it here so you can use it.

Would be really interesting indeed :slight_smile: I was looking for a way to controll ATEM Mixer using NodeJS few weeks ago and didn’t got time to finish it.

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I just published my tool, so you can try and check if it suits your needs. If you have any questions about how to make it work, just contact me.

Best regards and good luck. :wink:

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