The FlowCaster software provides a secure connection from your creative software to a local monitor, no matter where the software or the monitor is. FlowCaster lets you keep your creative software and media in your facility or cloud, while allowing your editors and artists working remotely to get the pixel perfect display they need to create their magic. FlowCaster provides direct plugin for most creative software, and bridging software to share any other software they need. The video is transported via the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol, with full end to end encrytion, low latency and excellent error recovery. FlowCaster also support UDP, RTP, RTMP and WebRTC for alternate workflow sharing. Inside the secure pipe are up to 32 channels of high quality audio and your choice of lightly compressed video, using h.264, h.264/HEVC or JPEG-2000 up to 16 bits per pixel component. SDR and HDR/HLG signals are supported, as well as alternate colourspaces like Rec 709, BT 2020 and P3. Any video resolution and frame rate is supported, and quality settings allow for even low bandwidth connections to take advantage of FlowCaster.
Workflows
Work from home/cloud/remote monitoring
The main problem with using creative software remotely is the poor quality of the compressed/low bit rate/random frame rate output signal from shared desktop software. While FlowCaster uses desktop sharing for control of the software, the audio/video signal is tranported seperatly, using low latency/high quality compression and matching frame rate to your project. This gives you the abillity to monitor your work as if you were using a hardware output to an independant monitor. FlowCaster also supports HDR/HLG/WCG, any video resolution, up to 32 channels of hight quality audio and ancillary data including closed captions, active format description and v-chip information.
Production team sharing/collaboration
There are a number of ways FlowCaster's audio/video and desktops can be share to a group for collaboration:
- SRT MultiCast or HaiVision Gateway - maintain direct control of encrypted feeds by using SRT to all the collaborators. With the gateway, different users can be given different passwords and address/ports that can be fixed to a users IP address for futher security
- RTMP - send your output and desktops to the www.flowcaster.live server, or any other RTMP compatible server like twitch/youtube/facebook, and use the servers tools to share live audio/video, host chats and handle authentication
- WebRTC - use www.flowcaster.live's WebRTC compatible meeting rooms, or any other WebRTC compatible server, to support live A/V chat, authentication and text chat for one on one or multiuser collaboration
Cloud production or capture feed
Using SRT, signals from your creative software (Adobe/Avid/Assimilate/DaVinci/etc) or from baseband feeds (SDI, HDMI, NDI, IP) can be sent directly to the cloud and captured to MXF, MOV, AVI, MP4 or others by the FlowCaster server. Optionally, a proxy file can also be generated. All FlowCaster Server capture files support edit while record and playback while record, for local clipping or editing in Adobe Premiere. Signals can also be sent from the cloud, from Adobe/Avid/DaVInci/FlowCaster Server via SRT to be played locally as SDI or HDMI using a support A/V device (Aja, BlueFish444, BlackMagic, Matrox).
IP format conversion
The FlowCaster Server can also be used to convert UDP, RTP, NDI and SRT to a new UDP, RTP, NDI or SRT stream. The server supports both re-wrapping of the compressed data and transcoding of the signal to a new compression type. As well as IP to IP, both baseband (SDI/HDMI) to IP and IP to baseband are also supported.
Cloud to cloud
FlowCaster support cloud to cloud transmission. Both compressed, via RTP, UDP and SRT, and uncompressed, via Amazon CDI, transports are supported. FlowCaster also has the ability to read and write directly from cloud object storage, like Amazon's S3 storage. File mode may also be used for guarenteed copies of media to be moved from on point to another.
FlowCaster includes a native transmitter plug in for Adobe Premiere, After Effects and other supported Adobe software. This allows FlowCaster to appear as a physical output and get the highest quality audio and video to send from Adobe to the remote player. This enables one, or more, remote viewers to see exactly what would normally be on the local monitor.
FlowCaster includes and Avid OpenIO device that acts like a hardware output for you Media Composer and sends that signal to your remote viewer(s). This includes high frame rate/high bit rate video, up to 32 channels of audio and ancillary metadata including closed captions. FlowCaster can work with Avid MediaComposer cloud instance to provide a true audio/video monitor on your desk from the cloud.
FlowCaster includes an Assimilate direct and OpenFX monitor plug in, allowing monitoring of any software that support OpenFX. For Assimilate Scratch, high quality audio and video monitoring is supported. For OpenFX software, like DaVinci Resolve, only high quality video monitoring is support, due to the limitations of the OpenFX standard. In both cases, RGB, as well as YCbCr, signals are supported with up to 12 bits per component, using JPEG2000, or 10 bits per component, using HEVC.
