NDI Support?

With the new Virtual Production Tools we have the power to use Unreal to make TV and Film production.

Can we expect a native support for NDI in the near future? The github plugin is quite a task to be implemented for non programmers, while NDI could really free us from the input/output limits of the video card currently supported.

My guess is that it’s probably up to Newtek if they want it actually integrated with UE4 without you having to build the plugin yourself, they’d need to agree to how it would get distributed with UE4 and it would need to be updated for each UE4 release.

An official plug-in made by Newtek was just announced!

Thisis an article from september 2016 in which they basically annouce the same thing. I don’t know what to think.

Hey guys,
Any movement on this? Wondering if you’ve experimented with NDI yet. How difficult was it to get it going? Thank you!

None apparently unless you want to compile your own version of the plug in on github. I’m not quite there yet in unreal dev so I’d rather have a plugin pre-compiled, but yeah, it’s not moving very fast.

Anybody getting into the new plugin yet with NDI 4.5? Im having trouble with the input source media object. Im following the quick start guide, but just hit a road block with an empty component. Still waiting for access to the NewTek forums… but curious if there is any headway using their workflow within our community, or if im doing something wrong.

Me too.I don’t know how to set the input name.
1587239278.png

Hey Bruce,

I did figure out a solution. So ill try and explain it to my best here.

First to answer my problems from above, the media receiver component may not show the detail panel and prevent you from loading the NDIMediaTexture2D. You must expose the panel by going up to window -> details. Once exposed you can apply the texture you are streaming to.

For every incoming source you have, youll need a separate media receiver and base texture, as well as a blueprint actor with its own NDIfinder and NDIreceiver components. There are specific nodes to help you pull the source information, so we do not have to worry about setting the source names, you get the receiver component, then get the current connection information, after just keep track of its index. Within each blueprint you need to add something like in the image below. This represents how to begin a stream and change the source on that stream.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1?ui=2

Once the source is connected and active. You will be able to apply the media texture to any material for use in your scenes.

Hope this helps! Really excited about this!

Hi Stev_fun.

Thank you for your explanation above, however I am having trouble getting two separate NDI feeds into the same project. I have setup two different NDI Receive Actors and attached blueprints to both with NDIReceivers and Finders. I am attempting to find the separate sources by name. I know that they are both streaming on different names because I can set both of my canvases to display Stream 1 and then Stream 2. Do I have to create a separate actor? I also see that you are referring to an image in your above post but it does not seem to be loading. Could you provide some further insight or help me out?

Thank you!

Hi Stev_fun,

I didn’t see an image that you may have shared in your above post… I’m stuck at getting the stream to appear as shown on Page 13 of the Quickstart Guide. The part about creating a PlayerController got super confusing and I don’t know if I did it properly. The whole quick guide seems to leave out important bits of information to get this working properly. Any more info you can share would be extremely helpful.

Has anyone got it to work with composure yet? I have to setup for “texture input” instead of “media texture”. It seems to work but when I go into the chroma keyer and try to use the color picker, the image turns to that greygreen generic material. The only way I can set the color is manually.

Hi! Where are you getting this plugin from? Is it new or is it the really old one that’s been on github for ages? Thanks!

Never mind - found it! Isn’t it great when a new bit of tech pops up exactly when you need it!

Hello -

I’ve gotten this to work in UE4. Mapping NDI to a live texture. There’s an option to sync timecode or ‘use timecode’ on the NDI media source. How do you map that to the engine itself or get access to the timecode that’s streaming in through NDI?

Thanks,
Garret

Hi,
anyone knows ho to sync the engine to NDI source timecode?
Thanks!

I am using the NDI broadcast actor to send video, but the engine always crashes after several minutes. Do you guys have the same issue? Thank you.

Which version are you using? I’m using 4.24.3 and it seems to be ok.

@christianstamati @garrettvparrish
Did you advanced on that, syncing to timecode to the engine ?
On myself I can get the timecode with a blueprint from the receiver actor but how did you “feed” it to the engine ?