How NDI Studio Monitor Powers Everyday IP Video Workflows

NDI played a critical role in modern AVoIP environments, and Studio Monitor had become the go-to tool for validating IP video signals. MMG Events demonstrated how NDI Studio Monitor made it easy to discover, preview, and confirm NDI sources across a network in real time. The tutorial showed how operators relied on it for daily checks, troubleshooting, and confidence monitoring. For teams building or maintaining NDI-based systems, Studio Monitor proved essential. Check out the walkthrough:

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Read the full transcript below:

Hello, this is Charlie from MMG and today we're going to be walking through how to use and set up the studio monitor component within NDI tools. So what is studio monitor? So, studio monitor basically is a tool that allows you to open a sc basically a small window on your computer and this window you can then display available NDI sources on your network and it does a lot more than this as well. So, we'll be covering basically all the details here today. So, um yeah, I reckon let's get started. So basically to start open up NDI tools and then on this window you can see here this says studio monitor. So just click that then just give it a moment and then this window will appear here. So um to start with we're going to just look at the actual main settings. Um so this right now is just a screen saver. Um basically saying you're not currently viewing any NDIS on the network. So to access the settings for this, you basically want to look in the top corner where this little box with the three lines is. So if you click that, you can now basically view here available NDI sources on your network. Now we're basically just going to pull one of these NDI. So I'm going to pull this Atomos camera here. It's currently um pointing at a sound desk. And now, as you can see, we've now actually got more controls come up. We're going to come back to this shortly. So to start with, we're just going to look at this main settings here. So here is where all your available NDIS are. And um they also pop out because this is a machine um the N axis to be um precise. And that's making all of these different signals right now. So the main settings. So to start with, we've got application. So, the new monitor button that will basically just give you another window. So, pretty straightforward. Uh, run at Windows start. So, you can actually set this up so that it will open the moment your computer powers on and logs into your account. Now, you can also do web control with this. I'm not going to go into detail about that today, but you can do web control using studio monitor. And this button here obviously would be to allow that. And then this is the actual URL to connect and control over the uh internet. Um controls always visible. So basically, as you can see when I'm here, it's just a clean 1080p screen right now. But when I hover, you get these controls. So that will basically just make it so the controls are always visible. So you don't have to wiggle your mouse in order to bring the controls up. So totally up to you that one. Now you'll notice here there is a set record path. Now you can actually record NDI using studio monitor as well. So if you set the record path, we can then actually record that NDI. And the way you record the NDI is actually with this red button down here. So once you've set a record path and you click that, you can then actually record the NDI that you're pulling into the studio monitor. Now we've got audio here. So this is basically where would you like to what device would you like to send audio to from studio monitor? Because obviously when you pull an NDI source, it's you're not just pulling the video, you're also pulling the audio of that NDI. So, we can basically selectively choose to basically bus that audio out to a specific audio output if we like. So, you can bus it directly to some headphones and then still have speakers connected for other uses, things like that. Um, you can also choose to have no audio and just mute. And then down here, this basically determines the uh actual signal strength and level, let's say the gain of the audio. Um, and that will be totally up to your setup and, uh, what devices you're running as NDI. So, um, here we've got video. So, this basically we can show any alpha layers on the NDI, things like that. A lot of different, um, things here. A lot of these are fairly self-explanatory. I'll just quickly gloss over them. So, obviously center cross will give you center lines. particularly good when you're aligning things like cameras uh safe areas which are good uh to use if let's say you're sending an NDI feed of the camera to the actual camera operator. So you can then actually let's say you've got pips in your production. You can actually put safe areas in that will show the camera off where he needs to keep the person so that they don't end up going outside the pit. uh 4x3 aspect ratio if you want to change aspect ratios um more settings related to aspect ratios there it's totally uh up to you if you need that or not uh tally indicator is interesting so if I click this actually you can see nothing happens right now but if I now go onto this camera here so this is actually the camera that you can see obviously right now on this video now you can see there's this red line on that camera signal so That camera signal basically currently is in the main output of uh V-Mix that we're using to record this. So it's basically detected that I am in a main output. So it's displaying as red. Now if it was in the preview of the production software, that line would be green. And if it is not in the preview or the main output, it will show no colored band at the top. just like this camera signal right here. So the tally can be uh very useful in certain applications. Um flip horizontal, flip vertical just to change um the way the NDI actually uh looks. Totally up to your needs if you need that or not. Uh lowest latency. So if you click this, it will improve the latency of the NDR you're seeing on the screen. So, um, if you're doing things like just checking, um, NDIs or maybe troubleshooting, a NDI signal appears as black, you most likely will not need this option. It will probably only be for specific things such as camera control and things like that. Uh, deinlay, if you're using uh, interlace signals and things. And then right here, you've got VU, VU meter, and the VU meter scale. So VU meter just gives you basically audio meters down the side of the uh window that will appear right here on the screen. And that then gives you basically a way to monitor that audio without actually listening to it. And then you can change the scale of that as well if you like. Uh low bandwidth. So this will reduce the bandwidth that studio monitor is using in order to pull these NDI signals. Now connection reliability. So I'm going to click this and now you can see that this has appeared on the screen. So this actually shows the reliability of the actual NDI source and gives you just a rough metric on the stability of that NDI signal. So if you ever see that all the way in the red, then you know your NDI signal is not very healthy. Now we've got overlay here, which is an interesting one. So currently, as you can see, we've got a tick here next to this picturein picture. So this is the actual overlay setting. We can also overlay using alpha if we would like. And then basically what we can do is overlay a camera onto this. So, I'm actually going to use this MMG Axis 01, which is basically an SDI of the camera that you were seeing on the screen of me, uh, being encoded on our MMG axis. So, as you can see, the camera feed now appears in the corner of that actual NDI within studio monitor. And so, you can actually then monitor several things at the same time if you would like. This could be like a main tx in the corner and then you could have a multiv- view sat behind that for example. There's many many different use cases and then if we overlay using alpha it will basically overlay over the top. So I'm just going to take away um this overlay now. Um like none. Now output. So where we've got this floating window. So that basically this refers to this actual window that NDI studio monitor is open in. So if we do things such as full screen, it goes full screen. Quite self-explanatory. To return out of full screen, you can also click this button in the top here and that will do the same thing. You can also doubleclick the middle of the screen and that will also put it into full screen and back it out of full screen. Now the uh NDI video output is uh quite an interesting one. So you can actually have Studio Monitor create an NDI of what you're seeing within the monitor as well. Uh scale video to window. So if I untick this, you'll now see it looks incredibly zoomed in. So this is because now it's running full screen and it's not scaling it. So, if I go full screen, we can now see the full camera image. But obviously, if I do that, we're now cropping off bits of the image and not scaling. Click that just to scale it back. As you can see now, always on top. So, this will basically make sure that NDI Studio Monitor is always loaded over the top of any application. So even if you try to click off to another application, Studio Monitor will always stay right at the front. You can also hide window border which will basically just hide those borders that you see there. And then we've also got this move to quadrum. So this will actually move it to a quarter of your screen. So you could actually open multiple instances of studio monitor. So you could have four of these in every corner of your screen and one could be say a main TX of cameras and then the other three could be three cameras coming in over NDI and that then gives you the ability to cut and switch those cameras and also see your main TX at the same time. Now that is all of the settings apart from just PTZ settings. Now you can basically choose to turn off show PTZ controls or not. And the PTZ controls are what these are down the side here. So when you've got a PTZ camera such as this one connected within Studio Monitor, you can now actually control that camera and the way it moves. You can do the zoom. You can also do things like focus as well. So, turn that off autofocus. And now it's changing. We can also adjust that manually as well. I'm just going to leave it on autofocus for now. And then we can also store presets. So, in order to store presets, um, you basically want to click the store button and then you would click whatever preset you wanted to store. So, if I want to say store one on eight, I then click number eight. And now that preset is stored on number eight. And in order to recall that preset, if we simply move the camera over here. Now, if I click that number eight, it will now move back to where I saved that preset. Now, the other useful thing that you get here is this little cog. So, on many NDI cameras and devices, you often have a user interface for controlling and changing settings on the device. So if you want a quick shortcut to actually access the uh interface for the specific NDI devices, you can click this. So if I click this right now, I'd basically be taken to the interface to change all of the camera settings such as exposure and the white balance and even the NDI settings and network settings on that camera as well. So that is everything you to cover within studio monitor. The only bit I've not touched on is um basically if you're running uh the screen capture within NDI tools uh you can actually have the option of doing NDI KVM and that will also appear next to this settings box. there will be a little KVM box, but we'll uh have a video about screen capture coming out shortly where we will demonstrate this. So that is everything for NDI Studio Monitor. It is incredibly useful for monitoring signals, controlling cameras as well and so many things like we use this all the time for our live events and productions. So, thank you for watching.