Review: BoinxTV
Hardware Encoding
With hardware streaming, an external encoder or encoding computer is used to handle the video encoding. With this approach, the BoinxTV output is set to full-screen mode and the DVI signal and audio are then fed into the encoder hardware. This reduces the CPU and memory burden on the BoinxTV Mac and gives the user many more options when it comes to encoder choices, selecting a CDN, streaming over private networks, and encoding formats.
In the Live to Stage configuration option, the BoinxTV output is not encoded but, instead, is fed directly to a projection display or other large-sized screen. This opens up the live presentation to all the video feeds and effects present within BoinxTV; it can include live sources such as RSS feeds or Twitter updates.
Figure 2. BoinxTV offerschromakeying to insert artificialbackdrops, as well as rich text andimage layering functionality.
One of the most powerful features of BoinxTV is its layers capability. A layer can contain any type of image (camera input, movie, JPEG graphic, etc.) as well as text, colors, backgrounds, and sound. These layers are then built up, one on top of the other, to form a composite video image, much as layers of images are built up in Photoshop.
BoinxTV comes with its own library of predefined layers, including movie credits, video switcher, news crawl, station logo, and others.
In the hands of a skilled user, the richness and quality of BoinxTV’s video output compares favorably with broadcast systems costing tens of thousands of dollars. Layers can be controlled in a number of different ways. They can be manually switched on or off, set to trigger based on an event, or even set via timers. Each separate layer comes with its own set of properties to further control its appearance. A static text layer, for example, has controls for font type, font color, text size, kerning, alignment, shadow, and more. Users can also create their own custom layers using Apple’s Quartz Composer software.
BoinxTV comes with a number other features of note. The chromakey or green-screen feature (commonly seen on TV news and weather shows) is used to insert an artificial backdrop behind the presenter (Figure 2). This technique requires a uniformly colored background in the studio and uses filters within BoinxTV to mask the background color and substitute a user-defined color or image as the backdrop.
Special effects can be added to video camera feeds using BoinxTV’s library of filters. Carrying suggestive names such as Comic Book, Pop Art, and Sepia, these filter effects can add visual sizzle to boring sets and make them look as if they just came off a movie screen.