NDI Over the Internet: Second Campuses, Remote Guests and Remote Help

NDI beyond the building

Inside a church, NDI moves video over the local network. With two free tools, it can also move video between buildings and across the world, which opens up some of the most valuable, and affordable, things a church can do.

NDI Bridge: connect two campuses

NDI Bridge (part of the free NDI Tools for Windows) links two networks over the internet. NDI sources at one site appear at the other as if they were local.

Churches use it to:

• Send the main campus service to a second campus, as a live feed into their production
• Bring a satellite campus’s cameras back to a central production team
• Share one sermon feed with several locations
• Let a production team in one building support a smaller site

How it works, in short: one site hosts and the other joins. Your IT volunteer opens a port on the host’s router, and both sites run NDI Bridge.

Compared with leased video links or dedicated streaming hardware at every site, that’s a big saving. (See managing AV devices across multiple campuses.)

NDI Remote: bring in a guest from a link

NDI Remote (free NDI Tools for Windows) creates a link you send to someone outside the building. They open it on their phone or laptop, and their camera and microphone appear in your production as an NDI source.

Perfect for:

• A missionary update from the field, live in the service
• A guest speaker who can’t travel
• A testimony from a member who’s homebound or in the hospital
• A remote volunteer joining a planning or production call

No more pointing a camera at a Zoom window or capturing a laptop screen. The guest arrives as a clean source you can put full screen, picture-in-picture, or on slides. (vMix users also have vMix Call, which does a similar job inside vMix.)

What you need

• A solid upload speed at the sending end. Test it on a Sunday morning, not a Tuesday afternoon.
• Wired connections at both ends of a Bridge link.
• A Windows computer to run NDI Bridge or NDI Remote.
• Someone to set up the network side, usually opening a port for Bridge.
• Access control. NDI Access Manager controls which sources can be seen, so you only share what you mean to.

What to watch

• Delay is higher than inside the building. Plan conversations with a remote guest around a short lag.
• Internet trouble becomes video trouble. Have a backup: a pre-recorded version of the missionary update, or a still slide with audio.
• Test like it’s Sunday. Rehearse the full connection at the same time of day you’ll use it.

Remote production, the WorshipMetrics way

WorshipMetrics is built for help from anywhere. Cloud Control lets a remote volunteer or our team see and control OBS, vMix and ATEM from a browser, and Camera Control drives PTZ cameras remotely. NDI over the internet fits right alongside them. (See also cloud vMix production for churches.)

Planning a second campus or remote guests? Map your current system and tell us about both sites. We’ll recommend the simplest path.

More NDI ideas on our NDI for churches page.