Tech post – Magewell Ultra Stream HDMI – H.264 Live Streaming Encoder

The Magewell Ultra Stream HDMI takes video signals up to 4k (2160p60) and encodes at up to 1080p60 to any RTMP destination. It also features YouTube, Twitch and Facebook API integration should you prefer a more automated option. It’s a very interesting product with many useful features that aren’t available at the price-point from other vendors.

We received one of the first units in the UK during October 2018. In the time we’ve had it there have been a few much needed firmware updates. As of mid-February 2019 the unit is now in a much better state but in our tests it’s still not capable of fully working as advertised. Edit: May 2019 – recent update fixes stability issues and unit is working well in extensive tests.

Edit 2nd August 2019 – There have been a couple of firmware updates – the latest is v1.2 – it’s a two step update but once done brings some welcome new features to the Magewell Ultra Stream. Including a Web Interface – thanks to Martin at ZEN for the screen grab.

Note: 5/8.2019 – v1.2 update is not deploying via the Google Play Store. Until the new version is available there you can download the file directly via Magewell’s website – on your Android device click the download from Play Store icon, a dropdown appears – select download to computer. This will place the file (just under 8mb) in your downloads folder. We uninstalled the V1.1 version before running the downloaded file. At some point it will become live in the app store – if you don’t fancy faffing around manually installing apps then wait for the official Google Play verified version.

Aside from the Web Interface there’s H.265 recording (but not streaming) and more granular control over the stream settings including the AAC audio parameters which is great.

We will know more once we have had chance to test the new firmware properly.

On another note – there’s an SDI version due out very soon.

This isn’t so much of a full review than an overview of what it does, how it does it and things we’ve discovered when we tried it out over the last few months.

Article updates:

Mid-March 2019 – new firmware with maximum datarate increased from 4mbps to 8mbps. More info below.

May 2019 – new firmware adds RTMPS support for Facebook Live. We also conducted extensive testing of the device with 2.5hr and 3.5hr live streams – no issues at all with 1080p50 sources, 1080i50 sources or 720p50 sources streaming to Restream.io via RTMP (to both FB and YouTube), Facebook Live manually via RTMPS and Facebook via the API.

Main features

• HDMI in with an HDMI loop out up to 4k
• Encodes in HD up to 1080p60 at 8 Mbps
• Separate 3.5mm microphone in & headphone monitoring jacks
• Supports two simultaneous streaming destinations
• Ethernet and WiFi
• USB port for recording H.264 MP4 files
• Controlled by Android 5 and up or iOS 9 onwards app with monitoring

Inputs and outputs

The back of the unit is the business end. Here you’ll find the HDMI ports, Gigabit Ethernet socket and the DC jack input. The red dot in the middle is a reset paper clip push type recessed button.

You can feed up to 4k60p in via HDMI – this will be down-scaled to either 1080p or 720p at 15/24/25/50/60 fps. The unit does support 1080i and will de-interlace the signal. It’s great to have a loop through of the input.

It’s always better to use an Ethernet rather than WiFi. We found it necessary to manually disable WiFi when using a hardwired connection. Leaving WiFi enabled when not using it seemed to cause connectivity issues for us. WiFi is of course very handy if you want to stream via a mobile hotspot.

DC input is via a small non-locking barrel connector. A 2A rated PSU with a USB to 5v cable is included. While it’s a pain not having a locking cable, or even a regular Micro USB or USB-C connector at least it can be powered by a good 2A capable portable battery bank.

The front of the Ultra Stream HDMI is home to the audio jacks and USB host port. From left to right there’s headphone output, microphone level audio input.

The USB port takes a fast USB thumb drive that can be formatted as either NTFS, exFAT, VFAT or FAT32 – Longer recordings are split into a series of spanned 1GB files. Magewell have published a list of tested USB sticks. It really is worth buying an approved drive because they actually work!

LEDs and buttons

There are six blue LEDs on the top which indicate the status of various functions of the device. There are also two buttons – the red ‘Rec’ button activates record mode while the green button is marked ‘Live’ and starts the stream manually. You can operate these two functions without needing to use an Android or iOS device. It is possible to record only, stream only or record and stream.

The LEDs have three states – OFF (when it’s not powered up), solid for when that function is ON/active and very slowly pulsing for standby/not active. I would have preferred to ditch the pulsing mode – it’s confusing especially at a glance and just have either ON for active or completely OFF.

All of the legends on the device are indented into the plastic. The icons and font size are tiny making it tricky to see any of the markings clearly. We printed out sticky labels to make things a bit easier.

Dual encoders?

There is a main and a secondary sub-stream encoder. The current firmware limits the main encoder to a maximum 1080p data rate of 8 Mbps. There are no user options to see or set for the audio encoding rate which turns out to be fixed at 128 Kbps.

The encoder settings do have some bit rate control but it’s stepped, has lower maximum limits for lower resolutions/frame rates and is not completely granular. Note new firmware has additional 8mbps option for 1080p that steps from 4mbps to 8mbps – i.e. you can’t select 6mbps.

The secondary encoder maxes out at 720p30 up to 1 Mbps.

You can choose to stream from either the main encoder or secondary encoder. You can also select which of the encoders two is recorded to USB.

We are reliably informed that the initial firmware version could go up to 8 Mbps on the primary encoder. This was reduced in the later public releases perhaps to prevent overheating (unconfirmed).

The encoding quality is good given the data rate limitations. I would like to see higher data rates available – especially for 1080p50/60

8mbps is now possible in 1080p along with the following updates:

Release note for firmware V1.1.4159
1. Add support for USB wireless network cards.
2. Add network interface configuration for live streaming.
3. Add AP mode.
4. Increase the password length for bluetooth Wi-Fi to 32 bytes.
5. Add status prompts for live streaming.
6. Add reason prompts for abnormal termination of recording.
7. Add an 8 Mbps option for the compression bitrate of the main stream.
8. Increase the upper limit of the bitrate range of H.264.

Streaming to multiple platforms

You can save settings for several destinations and provided you have the bandwidth you can stream to any two of those simultaneously. There are some limitations – firstly you can’t send two different bit rates to two different streams – you must send either the main encoder or secondary encoder to both. You cannot mix and match when simulcasting.

The next limitation is due to Facebook’s API restrictions. If you take advantage of the integrated Facebook API settings for any streaming software or hardware then you cannot simulcast. Happily you can bypass the FB API and send to to FB via RTMP plus one other destination e.g. YouTube via their API or RTMP.

We haven’t got any experience of using Twitch ourselves but we are told it works well.

The YouTube and Facebook APIs are the very basic “Stream Now” type – you don’t need a computer/web browser to use them but you don’t have any stream preview/go live options. Stream titles will be the default for the platform.

If you choose to send RTMPS/RTMP to either Facebook or YouTube you will need to use a desktop browser (or a clever enough mobile browser) to get to the preview screens and to trigger the broadcast. Vimeo Live doesn’t currently have a preview option so when you hit the Live button on the Magewell the RTMP stream is broadcast directly.

We much prefer the manual RTMP option and always have a laptop or desktop online to set up the stream keys, previews etc. Manually entering URLs and Stream Keys isn’t ideal with a mobile device – even if you send the settings to yourself via email etc switching focus between the Magewell app as you copy and paste things across is fiddly and frustrating.

If you have your own RTMP server or permanent stream keys in services like Restream.io then you only need to set the unit up once. It will remember your last settings and let you add/delete/select different server settings which is really useful for sending quick private test streams.

I can see why Magewell might favour an app interface for the API style of integration – it’s very slick and works fine – you can see exactly what’s being sent & have audio monitoring via the app. However, a web interface would make it easier (edit – it’s here Aug 2019 see above) to work with for copying manual RTMP settings across.

Colour space

Early firmware didn’t expand the colour from video cameras from 16-235 to 0-255. The result was dull whites and slightly grey blacks. We are pleased to confirm that it’s been fixed and now colours look fine as can be seen in this top/bottom comparison with a different encoder.

Resilience during a crisis

There are two things that can really mess things up when live streaming – these are HDMI being a bit rubbish and network connectivity issues/drops.

HDMI is not the best way to move HD video signals around in a live environment. Unlike HD-SDI the connectors don’t lock into place so can easily be unplugged accidentally. Even if you plug HDMI back in quickly there’s a good chance HDCP/EDID could force you to power cycle one or more pieces of kit in the signal chain.

If the Internet connection drops during a live stream for any reason you need to restore it ASAP to get your stream back online. What you don’t want to find is that your encoder stalls and won’t resume once the connection is back online. Some services (Facebook Live especially) will assume the stream has ended if you don’t resume the stream within a short period of time.

We tested the Magewell to see what would happen if we pulled the HDMI cable out for 10 seconds then replaced it. We also pulled out the network cable for 20 seconds.

In both cases recording to USB carried on (black screen) and resumed fine. Streaming via RTMP recovered without any drama.

Local recording mode

It is possible to monitor and record video from the Ultra Stream onto an iOS or Android device. We haven’t got a use for this and therefore haven’t tried it beyond a quick look to confirm that it did work.

USB recording & other niggles

We haven’t had much luck with USB recordings in general. Even with one of the the recommended Sandisk USB drives (64gb) we get failed recordings after an undetermined length of time – it might be 30 mins or an hour or two.

If the unit is both streaming and recording the live stream fails at the same time the USB drive gives up recording. In tests the live streamed picture freezes and the audio carries on. Edit: Fixed as of May 2019.

Our Magewell dealer has been very supportive – They’ve managed a 5hr+ USB recording with the 32GB version of the same USB drive we tested. At some point in the near future we’re going to exchange units and conduct more tests.

At this point I don’t know if our unit is defective or not (yep ours was faulty – new unit is fine) – there are some other anomalies such as the HDMI pass-through signal being intermittent on some TV monitors but rock solid on others. We also saw our normally reliable Ninja recorders get very upset and shut themselves down at random intervals when hooked up to the Magewell looped output. The point at which the Ninja shut down corresponded to the livestream image quality dropping significantly and the audio dropping completely.

Until these issues are resolved we won’t be deploying the Magewell Ultra Stream on jobs and will stick with our other encoders. Edit: We’re going to test it on a couple of jobs sending to a private stream to fully check it’s rock solid.

Why we use a hardware encoder?

We use dedicated hardware video switchers rather than computer based software switchers for most jobs. We have tried software encoding but much prefer to use a dedicated encoding appliance – it suits our needs and has been much more reliable. There’s nothing worse than firing up two computers at an event which have run a full raft of updates/checks the day before only to find they both go into ‘This might take all day to update before I want to start’ mode.

Premiere CC tip and final thoughts

Recordings from the Magewell are H.264 flavour MP4 with a .mp4 file extension. They work well in VLC and other software players.

Highly compressed MP4 files are a distribution and viewing format. They aren’t generally suitable for editing but we know from experience that some of our customers want the option to do that. We had trouble importing the native MP4 files into Adobe Premiere CC 2019 on two of our Windows 10 editing machines. Interestingly the files imported fine into CS6 on a different computer.

We think that this could be related to Adobe’s own QuickTime compatibility since Apple QT is now defunct in Windows. We re-muxed the MP4 files with AvideMux into fresh files using a dead simple copy video, copy audio and output with MP4v2 Muxer this removed all traces of QuickTime from the files which then imported fine into CC.

Re-muxing doesn’t re-compress the file and doesn’t affect quality. In this case with these settings it just re-wraps the video and audio into a more compliant MP4. We don’t know if Magewell can or will fix it but we’ve let them know.

It’s not currently possible to set file names. We’d like to see that feature included. We would also like a higher bit rate options for both video and audio. Button and HDMI in/out labels compatible with old codgers eyesight and static LEDs (on/off variety) would also be nice.

This is Magewell’s first live streaming product. The encoding quality is good given the low price of the unit. The feature set is excellent with dual encoders, USB recording a very nice app to control it.

An SDI unit would be a welcome addition (fingers crossed) – SDI version out soon (Aug 2019). We know Magewell devs are busy with their NDI products – hopefully they’ll drop back on the Ultra Stream, fix the niggles and give us a few tweaks in the near future.