This page covers sending a playout to other machines over the network. No cable, no card: the picture appears as a source on any NDI receiver on the same network — a mixer, a second machine, a monitor.
The settings
Settings → Outputs, with the kind set to NDI:
| Setting | What it is |
|---|---|
| NDI name | The name receivers see. Give it something recognisable: Hall screen, not Output 1. |
| NDI group(s) | Which groups this source belongs to, comma separated. |
Groups, and the trap in them
Receivers only see the groups they are set to look at, and that is Public by default.
So: leave Public in the list unless every receiver in the building has been set up for your own group. A source in a private group that nobody is looking for is invisible, and looks exactly like a source that is not working.
A second group is useful to tell several playouts apart on one network. Leave the field empty and the machine’s own default applies.
What has to be installed
NDI is not built in. It arrives through the DistroAV plugin plus the NDI runtime; the program loads that plugin from the machine’s plugin folder when it is there.
If the output does not start, the status tooltip asks the obvious question: is the DistroAV plugin and the NDI runtime installed? That is nearly always the answer.
What NDI costs
Network, and quite a lot of it. A full-resolution NDI stream is a serious load on a network — one line is fine on gigabit, several on a shared office network is not.
If NDI is stuttering while the machine is calm, the network is the place to look: a switch, a shared uplink, or a wireless leg somewhere in between.
Alpha
NDI carries transparency. That makes it the simplest route for an overlay output to reach a mixer, without needing a card with fill and key.