I was excited when NDI input was added. I still haven’t used that on any job, but I’ve been playing around with it a bit. I find NDI itself a bit clunky. I downloaded the latest NDI Tools 6.01 and installed it, so I could generate streams on my laptop to send to my computer that runs Onyx. I’ve been using the VLC plug in to generate the streams. It works, but there are several glitches and annoyances with it.
Anyone else using this kind of setup to test/learn NDI input with Dylos?
I can report one thing: you can upgrade to NDI 6.01 and it doesn’t break the NDI 5 that is installed with Onyx.
I also have Onyx installed on my laptop, and NDI 5 is installed as part of that. I feared that when I installed the updated NDI 6 it might mess with Onyx, but no, it appears to be just fine. I noticed that while installing NDI 6, it wiped out everything NDI 5 in the start menu, except for “NDI 5 Runtime”, so that must be the bit that Onyx is still using.
hello, we use ndi a lot. with nx1 and on pc with wing. the most important thing for using it without unexpected glitches and stutters, is the network u use it with. as faster and more isolated only for ndi, as less problems you will have.
the second thing we realized, is that the vlc plugin himself can be a problem. since we send ndi from resolume instead of vlc, we have much more stable results.
Yes, I find the VLC playback to be a bit annoying. On my setups, when the clip ends, the NDI stream goes blank, and I have to close and reopen VLC to restore it, even though the video appears to be still looping in VLC. The other annoyance is that we have to change video output module in VLC, so it’s own screen is blank, and I can use Studio Monitor in the NDI Tools to view the stream, but if I want to later use VLC normally to watch a video, I have to reset the output module.
I’ve also had difficulty choosing which network to use. I have a laptop with two external USB network adaptors. With the NDI Tools Access Manager, I can see them both and I’m supposed to be able to choose which one NDI goes out over, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet. The only setting that gives me a stream is “Automatic”, and that routes it to the network that I would prefer to reserve just for sACN.
@deflost, I’m not going to be able to use Resolume, and I don’t have the budget for external hardware. Do you know of any cheap or free software that runs on PC that I could use to generate NDI streams?
Also, I think I may have discovered an Onyx/Dylos bug. When I applied a color palette to the NDI source stream, and then tried to remove that by setting “Palette Slot Selection” back to “Idle”, or by clearing the whole color parameter tab, the video did not revert to normal, but retained a palette. I could change palettes, but not remove one entirely. The only way to get back to the original uncolored video stream was to delete it from the library and re-add it.
I’ve only tried this on one computer so far, so consider this a preliminary report.
Thank you for your description of the issue.
Did you only encounter this when colouring an NDI source, or did you encounter this when colouring factory media content too?
Which version of Onyx were you running?
we also use OBS to generate ndi streams. it is free, but you have to install the ndi plugin.
Well, today I can’t reproduce this. I was doing a lot of switching around of settings. Trying to get NDI to prefer my second NIC rather than the one I use for sACN output. But now the color palette selection/idle is working normally.
I’ve noticed that Onyx seems to take a while to register the NDI input stream when I close and restart Onyx. I know the stream is still going on the network, but it doesn’t show up in my library/NDI sources until 2 or 3 minutes after I’ve restarted Onyx.
Thank you for the information. I’ll investigate further.
Update, re Onyx taking time to register a new NDI stream. I’ve just upgraded to a better network switch (formerly Zyxel GS1200, now Netgear M4250). I notice when I start a new NDI stream, Onyx is snappier about recognizing it. Still not instantaneous. But more like 10-30 second average wait than minutes.
Thank you for the update. This period of time for Onyx to detect and receive the NDI stream on the network is as expected.
Further questions about NDI input. Does Onyx Dylos not recognize the audio part of the NDI stream? After reading the manual I’m a little unclear. It seems in the library you can select “processor” type for an input as VU, Waveform, Audio Filter, Spectrum etc. and then NDI as the “source type”. But I can’t get audio to come in with the NDI stream.
Also, dumb unrelated question: there is no way to load an audio clip directly into a slot in the media library, is there?
There is no way to load a audio file directly into Onyx which I find odd because they give you soo much storage in their consoles but you can’t playback a basic audio file. It has to be routed into Onyx. For Onyx on PC you can select a audio input source in the main user setting usually it’s your preferred ASIO or you can select other options that are highlighted in white in the drop down menu.
To get audio from one place to another NDI is easy and sounds like what you want. You’ll need to enable the NDI stream in Reaper using the FX tab plug in and selecting VST plug in. Make sure that NDI is downloaded on the PC you’ll need NDI and Reaper. NDI uses your NIC and ethernet to send audio to the place you want it sent so the other PC needs to be in network.
I tried the NDI though and it didn’t work. I wasn’t sending it from Reaper though. On the other computer (the NDI sending computer) I used VLC, and I set both the video and audio output modules to “NDI output”. I always use VLC with NDI tools to transmit NDI video over my network for testing Dylos.
On the recieving computer, the run that is running Dylos, when I open the NDI Tools that is also on that computer, I see my video stream, and there is a VU meter animation that looks like it ought to mean audio. But strangely, I cannot monitor that audio through any combination of speaker or headphone plugged in. Anyway, when I tried to create an input source in the Dylos library, when I chose “video” and source type as “NDI”, the video comes through fine as usual. But when I change to an VU Meter, Audio Filter, Spectrum etc, and leave the source type as “NDI”, nothing comes through. If I change the source type to “Audio” nothing comes through.
I guess it comes down to two questions:
Can Onyx actually generate an audio input source from an incoming NDI stream?
Is there something wrong with my receiving computer that is preventing me from monitoring audio (I can see it on the NDI meters, but I can’t hear it)?
I was able to get Audio into the Dylos library by plugging an audio input directly into the computer. But not any other way so far.
Obviously I need to go through a process of elimination and try different configurations.
Onyx does in fact accept NDI audio streams I use it daily. You might have a problem with setup so try making sure you have NDI audio selected you have to hold down the source and select audio-NDI under dylos settings. Here’s an example of NDI audio as waveform here
Yes - as @TheatricallyJerry says, ONYX can receive audio over NDI.
In ONYX, please go to ONYX > Menu > NDI > Input Streams. Select your NDI Input, and you should see “Audio Properties” is listed. Make sure the ChannelCount is greater than 0, and ensure a Sample Rate is detected.
Then exit the ONYX Menu, and in the Library window, add an NDI Video Input, and choose your NDI Video source. After doing this, you should see a VU meter on the right of your NDI stream’s thumbnail. You can then add another User Input, which can be configured as a VU Meter, using your NDI stream as the source. This should then show you the incoming audio.
To monitor the audio ONYX is receiving, in ONYX go to Menu > I/O Settings > Settings, and then choose a Driver Type. Try using Kernel Streaming. Then set an Audio Input, enable Audio Monitoring, and then choose your Audio Output, and enable the output channels. Click Apply, and exit the Menu. Now if you view the Details of an Input Source in the Library window, you can listen to the incoming audio.
I have just tested this, by running NDI Tools on a PC. On the PC, I played some audio, and sent a Screen Capture with audio over NDI. This was then received by ONYX on a different PC over the network. I would ensure that NDI Tools is not running on the same PC as ONYX whilst troubleshooting this.
So it seems I am not getting the VU meters at the right of my Library Source thumbnails. (Although I notice in Jerry’s screenshot there are also no VU meters on the thumbnail).
First, just to check, this is not a version issue is it? I am running 4.10.1271.0 on a Windows 11 PC, with an NX Wing attached.
So, as you can see from the screenshots, in Menu>NDI>Input Streams the stream (Gort-VLC) is being detected, and two audio channels are indicated with a sampling rate of 44.1k (it’s looping a NASA science newscast).
When I go back into library, I can add that stream as an NDI video source. That’s what I often do. But when I try to add that as a Waveform or other audio source, it just creates a blank. Also, there are no meter indications on the thumbnail in any case.
One thing I noticed back in the Menu>I/O screen is that there is no “Input Audio Device” corrresponding to the Gort-VLC playback. There are selections for “NDI Webcams” but those don’t do anything. I have successfully gotten audio into Onyx on this computer using the “Realtek Mic Input”. But nothing else does anything.
I do see audio output for monitoring, although I can’t hear anything. I have gotten that working on this computer in general, with different sources, but nothing is coming out of Onyx because it appears Onyx isn’t taking anything in.
Later I decided to play around with NDI to see if I could monitor the incoming audio. First of all, NDI was extremely janky. Sources seem to appear and disappear at random depending on selections I made. I eventually realized that if I opened the “Router” utility on the sending computer (Gort) and selected a different source and then reselected what was up, it would trigger the NDI Studio Monitor on the Receiving computer (the one with Onyx), and I could monitor the audio too. But it still didn’t show up in Onyx in any place. I can see that the version of NDI Tools installed on the receiving computer is 5.6, and on the sending computer it’s 6.1.
I am wondering if it could be a Realtek audio driver problem?
Thank you for the information and screenshots.
In ONYX, there are two similar windows - the DyLOS “Zone Parameters” window, and the Library window. The audio level will only be shown on thumbnails in the Library window. Jerry’s screenshot shows the Zone Parameters window.
NDI input functionality is the same in ONYX 4.10.1271, as it is in the current latest version, ONYX 4.30.
The Audio Devices in Menu > I/O Settings will list any physical or USB audio devices connected to your PC. NDI audio streams are not listed here, as they live with the NDI settings.
These are “virtual” audio interfaces that will have been created by NDI Tools. Your PC will essentially think these are “real” audio inputs, and hence they will be listed here.
In the Input Source tab of the Library window, tap the “Details…” button at the top, and then tap on your NDI source. This will open the stream details window, where you can monitor the audio using your configured audio output device…
This is the key information, and suggests to me that ONYX is receiving the audio. Therefore, you should be able to see the incoming level when viewing this NDI input in the Library window.
Thanks everyone, I got it working. I’m not sure what the key element was. I did change the source player on the sending computer, formerly I was using VLC with the NDI plug-in, and I changed to using OBS. But even then it didn’t work at first. Only after I stopped and started OBS a few times did the audio finally kick in in Onyx. I get the impression NDI in generally is a janky and unreliable technology. I never did get the audio monitoring of the NDI stream to work in Onyx, although I could monitor it by running the standalone NDI tools monitor at the same time (they seemed to run alongside each other okay and it didn’t cause obvious problems with Onyx).
My next project will be to figure out a way to playback video and audio on the same computer as is running Onyx, without having to load the video into the Onyx library. I would like to use OBS to do this, as it is free, and it offers easy capability to mix and window different video sources into one stream. I notice there was an “Allow Local NDI Sources” button in the NDI tab, so I imagine I’ll be using that. And I will investigate using Reaper as well as Theatrically suggested.
