Pearl2: Portable professional production in a pelican case!
We used it to help us made a video to poke fun at all the overhyped fake energetic youtube channels out there. That masterpiece is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chL2fBZUh8c
The Pearl2 is a niche device, but it is actually very robust in what it does. It would be the perfect production appliance for lecture halls in universities, business training & presentations and that sort of thing.
Please click the link for the Pearl2:
https://www.epiphan.com/products/pearl-2/?ref=level1
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/epiphan-pearl-2-video-production-system-review
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So our office actually passed on the Epiphan Pearl 2 for streaming and built a setup using Telestream Wirecast and a capture box.
The basic issue is that the Epiphan is not actually built for a live event environment. It has some use in a university or Corporate web/Telecast environments but for live events you still have a dedicated video switcher to control what goes to the screens for the live attendees of the event. Because of that you take the Auxiliary outs from the video switcher to get what you want into your streaming device. Also I have yet to find a professionally marketed streaming solution that does not save your setup in way that lets you call it back up as needed.
Other hardware based venders to check out for this product type is Newtek's Tricaster Series. We have a very old one that we still use but they are the brand in the industry that everyone is trying to catch.
Serious question, you did have a lot of "special effects" in your previous glorious review, those were added post-production right? Just wondering because at the beginning of that video you said no editing etc... I guess there is no way of doing this directly?
Knowing what the other streaming switchers can do it would not surprise me if they did 90% or more in the epiphany.
Has no Genlock, but then I guess it’s doing all the genlock internally.
It’s basically a heavy duty IP encoder with tons of FPGAs with hardware Chyrons. My uses more rely on a uncompressed pipeline, so as a 4K stream encoding appliance, it’s pretty great, but I’d still use a Blackmagic ATEM before it. It certainly would be MUCH cheaper and more portable than a Elemental encoder, which is what the top tier network news streaming places use:
https://www.elemental.com/products/aws-elemental-live
https://support.ustream.tv/hc/en-us/article_attachments/202948138/207852157-elemental.jpg
(Holy crap, they got bought by Amazon.)