What does it take to put on a great live event?

While some might say magic and elbow grease (can’t argue with either of those), what it really boils down to is a solid live streaming equipment setup. Vimeo’s live production team has produced hundreds of shows for businesses around the world, and now we’re bringing our expertise straight to you.

Let’s start with our encoding kit — our base for almost every single production we handle. We've refined and tested the contents of this kit over years of working on the road in varying venues, scopes of work, and challenges.

A compact kit for air-friendly travel

Our team offers a variety of services, from handling encoding to full multi-camera productions. Through almost a decade of providing on-site production services, we’ve learned that no matter how much pre-production you do, there are always those last-minute ‘Can you do this?’ requests. So our goal was to create a compact, airline-friendly kit that could handle whatever was thrown our way.

We’re often hired to work in conjunction with other A/V vendors that are providing us some part of the webcast production, whether it’s cameras, audio, lighting, or all three. Depending on what gear those production partners have, sometimes there are limitations on what they can provide us.

The key to this kit is that it’s flexible and modular. By itself, we can easily take in multiple feeds from an onsite production team, or we can add in our own camera packages and build out a full show.

Meet our encoding kit

No live streaming equipment setup is complete without an encoder. Literally — it converts a live feed so that it’s viewable over the Internet via computers and mobile devices. The encoding kit is built around the workhorse Studio HD550 switcher and encoder. We bring two HD550s — a primary and a backup) on every production, which allows us redundancy and the flexibility to build upon even the simplest shows.

I should note that only one HD550 fits in our kit, so we bring the second HD550 as a carry-on. This gives both peace of mind and covers our bases in the event that the airline delays your checked luggage.

The rest of the kit is built out with adaptors and converters to help complete the setup:

AJA HD5DA HD-SDI Distribution Amplifiers (2)

Essential gear for your live streaming equipment setup