In recent years the demand for live streaming has skyrocketed, and manufacturers have responded, making it easier and cheaper for almost anyone to live stream. Not too long ago live streaming required a computer, a robust network and specialty video interface or card to ingest your video. Now manufacturers have developed products that shorten the space from recording in camera to live stream. At NAB 2013, Matrox introduced the next step in this evolution that actually makes streaming and recording simultaneous: the Matrox Monarch HD with a list price of $995. This award-winning device is a great solution for the house-of-worship market because it offers two solutions that churches are looking for, archive and streaming, at a cost that is acceptable for either solution separately.
A closer look …
The little brushed aluminum box looks right at home on Mac Pro tower. The small form factor (5.6 by 4.3 by 1.2 inches) also fits three devices on a 1 RU tray and houses a deceptive amount capability. On the front of the Monarch HD are the capture interfaces: two USB ports and an SD card slot, along with streaming and recording buttons and status LEDs for power and warning. On the back of the device there is a power connector, a gigabit RJ45 Ethernet port, HDMI in and out, and 1/8-inch analog audio in and out. The USB ports allow the Monarch to capture to a thumb drive or USB external hard drive. While these are good options, it doesn't stop there. The SD card slot gives an alternate option, but since the device connects to the Internet it can also record straight to a networked hard drive. This option is particularly interesting because it gives you the opportunity to speed up your workflow dramatically. Lets say, for example, the networked drive was attached to an editing station with a non-linear editor (NLE) on it; the capture could be ingested into the workflow very quickly. While the options for recording codecs are limited to MP4 or MOV, they are the industry standard codec options, so at least you are capturing known and trusted formats.
The HDMI output port is a great option for monitoring what you are recording and streaming, and all eight channels of audio are supported via the pass-through.
This award-winning device is a great solution for the house-of-worship market because it offers two solutions that churches are looking for, archive and streaming, at a cost that is acceptable for either solution separately.
On the input side, the HDMI port allows for ingest of progressive resolutions of 1920x1080 @ 60/59.94/50/24/23.98 frames per second or 1280x720@ 60/59.94/50 frames per second and interlaced resolution of 1920x1080i 29.97/25 frames per second. While that is a wide variety of options, the Monarch will auto-detect the input so there is no guesswork involved. The HDMI out is a pass-through with two frames of latency from input to out.
Streaming from the Monarch is fast and easy; from the web-based graphical user interface (GUI) simply point the device to your CDN or URL of choice and select one of the useful presets. For more technical users, manual parameters can be adjusted and saved into encoding presets that can be recalled quickly. Protocols supported for streaming include RTMP, RTSP/RTP, IPv4 Unicast and Multi Unicast (number of clients may vary from three to 10); and although capture and streaming share the H.264 encoder, recording quality and upload bandwidth are independent of each other. A typical setting will let a user record a master quality file at 25 Mbps while simultaneously streaming at a bitrate of 5 Mbps. As a dedicated streaming or recording appliance, Matrox Monarch HD can stream at bitrates up to 20 Mbps or record at bitrates as high as 30 Mpbs.
Control issues
Control of the Monarch can be achieved from any networked computer, but since the control is just a standard webpage it would also be accessible from an iPad or pretty much any device with a web browser. The web-based GUI is intuitive and easy to navigate through the controls and encode settings. For real geeks, Matrox also released the control API. This allows users and system integrators to create their own control software to start, stop and get the status of a device. For the technophobe worship leaders doing double duty as a tech guy, or old school tech guys like me, the physical interface buttons on the front of the device also start and stop recording and streaming.
One of the things I look forward to most when reviewing a new piece of gear is spending some time doing firmware updates. While most people would rather have dental work done, I see this as part of the “standard care and feeding” of any piece of gear, and I like being able to evaluate it. Updating the firmware on the Monarch was easy, simply download the updater and point it to the proper IP address. The most recent firmware update included hardware stability and system connectivity improvements.
I was only able to find two faults with this device: the first was the video input choice. In many professional settings HDMI is still a four-letter word, and SDI is the format of choice. Anticipating this, Matrox bundles the Monarch with the Matrox MC-100 dual SDI to HDMI convertor for $1,295. This convertor accepts any HD-SDI or 3G-SDI sources and converts it to an HDMI signal that may be used as a source for the Monarch if it is of a supported resolution. The second was the fact that the local storage port was an SD card rather than a CF card.
Admittedly, the file size after compression encoding will be small enough to render the extremely fast file transfer rate unnecessary. However, card size does still play a factor, and CF cards are still faster and larger then their SD counterparts. Though that speed comes at a higher price, and the cheaper SD cards may be a preference for many users, just not this one.
It's not out of the question to find a streaming device or a recording device that does a great job for $995, but not a device that does both, and does them well. The Matrox Monarch HD is a fantastic solution for churches that are just getting started in streaming and would like to have a local archive. The easy-to-use interface and controls make using the Monarch no problem at all. The streaming/encoding options are feature-rich but not overwhelming, giving you a great compromise between usability and decision paralysis. It seems like Matrox has released a great product at a great price.
