I think it is fair to say that streaming is complex, especially if you want to go beyond “Instagram live from a selfie camera.” Adding several angles, multiple cameras, and overlays is complex, and you would need quite a lot of gear for that. Well, say goodbye to that. RecNGo is a simple app that makes streaming affordable and accessible.
A personal anecdote, if you will. When COVID hit, I was asked to create solutions for streaming various events. Being who I am, I traditionally went for multicam and invoiced quite a lot of money for rentals. While I don’t remember the exact details of the invoice, I know I needed:
- Two cameras
- Two lenses
- Two tripods
- Two HDMI cables
- 4-6 batteries
- Streaming deck from Blackmagic
- Three people: one for each camera and one in charge of the stream
If the distance was too long, I also needed a way to get wireless video to the “brain” of the stream.
For a basic setup like this, the rental fee alone was around $300, if not more. Add crew fees, and you’re looking at $1,000 per stream minimum. If I wanted more cameras, or more of something, it snowballed into ridiculous sums most clients were not happy paying.
A setup where this much gear is needed would probably be a high-end production. But there is no way someone would stream their wedding or other small (or personal) events while paying this much for it. There is no way I am paying this much to stream a free webinar on lighting either.
Enter RecNGo: A Simple App Enabling Streaming for Everyone
RecNGO takes this $1,000 plus per-stream fee and makes it $100 less per month, with an unlimited number of streams. The great thing is that there is no noticeable compromise on quality. 
The secret to RecNGO is that they are using mobile phones as camera sources. Mobile? Yes, that’s right. Cameras in mobile phones are incredible nowadays, and the thing that matters is getting the image, which phones are great at. For most streaming situations, what matters is a good video feed, not a full frame 12-bit 4K signal. Just to prove how good phones are, I have images that were shot on my phone in my portfolio that is sent to commercial clients. No one has noticed yet. The pros of using a mobile device outweigh the cons a lot.
RecNGo has a lot on its plate. With a simple-to-use app, they can connect up to 12 camera sources, which it can control. The app allows for transitions, as well as adding pre-recorded tiles. As for output, RecNGo will stream natively to YouTube and Facebook. If you need to stream to a different platform, they have a custom RTMP output.
Overall, it is exciting to see a company going to battle with the “big boys.” It would be great to see RecNGo partner with producers of mobile accessories to make their product even more versatile. In fact, I wanted to stream my free webinar about lighting (announcement soon) and was already saving the cash for a crew. Now, I will simply use RecNGo for it, as all I need is multicam streaming, and for my intents and purposes, it can be done with phones.
I think Teradec Airmix is cool. It’s from a sister company of Manfrotto and provide boxes to attach to pro cameras to enable high end Wi-Fi networking of multiple cameras. You can attach a receiver on a computer and edit / live cast from there. Or use Airmix. A app for iOS. All this is mature stuff and I think Airmix is 30 usd a month. It only run on IOS and those phones expensive. It must be 5 years since I looked into that stuff so I don’t have details.
Would be interesting to try this because in general, any kind of video input over wifi is going to have a massive amount of latency/delays. For things like streams, video and audio sync is CRITICAL. I haven't tried this solution so I can't comment on it, but in general I will always choose a wired/cabled connection over wifi any day of the week
I’ve tested it, and there is no noticeable delay. Review coming at some point as well.
I thought about how this could be used. And I imagined a news network being able to show their viewers live coverage of what's happening on the ground by having people capturing footage using a specific app. If the technology is there, like shown above, streaming real live news would be a great step forward. Incentives like being paid if your footage is used during the stream would motivate the adoption.