BoinxTV

boinx.com/boinxtv

What is BoinxTV?

BoinxTV is an award winning software that turns your Mac into a TV studio for creating Live to Disk, Live to Internet and Live to Stage video. Record stunning studio shows, podcasts, sports events, concerts, interviews, sermons, seminars and more using your Mac, multiple cameras, microphones and other footage.

While recording, it can overlay logos, a news ticker, or create graphical effects so that the recording does not have to go to post–production before being published or broadcasted. The software also allows you to apply transformations and filters to the incoming video image, before or after applying other effects.

The output can either be recorded directly to a QuickTime movie for later post–processing (e.g. podcast producer) or be played fullscreen on a separate screen. Combined with third–party hardware like the Matrox MXO or Blackmagic DVI Extender this facility can be used to create broadcast–quality output.

The simple and accessible user interface even allows a single person to operate BoinxTV during the recording session. Because it runs on a MacBook Pro, it can be used in the field easily.

System Requirements

BoinxTV requires an Intel–based Mac with discrete graphics from ATI or NVIDIA and a minimum of 2 GB of RAM. BoinxTV runs on all current notebook and desktop Macs (including the MacBook with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M) with the exception of the Macs with integrated Intel GMA graphics (the earliest Mac mini, and the white or black MacBook models).

A multi–camera setup needs multi–core hardware and a fast graphics card. A Mac Pro with an ATI Radeon HD 3870, 4850/70, 5770/5870 graphics card, with additional FireWire PCI cards, is a good choice for BoinxTV.

At the time of release, most ATI graphics cards outperform NVIDIA cards, due to a combination of the current state of drivers and the underlying Quartz Composer technologies used by BoinxTV.

On the software side, BoinxTV requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.8 or higher) and the latest version of QuickTime. OS X Mountain Lion is recommended. In addition, the Apple Intermediate Codec that is installed as part of iLife '05 and later, or with one of the Apple Pro software packages, is strongly recommended.

Installation

To install BoinxTV, drag the application from the installer disk to your Applications folder.

Purchasing a License

BoinxTV includes a built in purchase assistant that guides you through the process of purchasing a new license or requesting a demo. Please contact the sales department at boinx.com/contact for information and pricing for multi–user and educational licenses.

Getting Started

BoinxTV comes with professional looking templates that help you get up and running quickly. In addition, various how-to screencasts including a short overview help you learn all common tasks. All how–to documents can be accessed via the BoinxTV Help menu, the overview screencast can also be found in the Extras folder of your BoinxTV installer disk.

BoinxTV can use various visual inputs like video cameras, microphones, and pre‐recorded material like movies and sound clips. You can use those inputs in any number of ‘layers’ that can be placed on top of each other, toggled on and off and interactively controlled. Simple layers are a fullscreen display of a video camera, other layers like a ticker tape, a station logo, lower thirds and others can be placed on top of that. Interactive control means that important aspects like a movie, its title, the caption of a lower third and such can be changed at any time while the show is being recorded/broadcast.

Two basic concepts are important for understanding how BoinxTV works: Layers and Settings.

1. Layer

Now start your show by dragging layers from the layers repository on the bottom into the layers stack in the middle. Or just use one of the templates as a starting point.

Select a layer in the middle column. Each layer comes with its specific parameters. The current layers are examples that give you an idea of what is possible. Layers can be customized and created by using Quartz Composer.

You can always see the result of the selected layer drawn in the left hand preview. The right hand preview shows you the current LIVE image, this is what would be recorded or rendered to an external screen.

2. Setting

For further information consult the BoinxTV Online Documentation or BoinxTV Help from the Help menu.

Questions, Comments, Feedback

We want BoinxTV to be the best tool for your needs. Give us feedback and tell us what you would like to see in future version. Also share your work with us and other customers. Use the feedback form on the website or choose Provide Feedback… from the BoinxTV menu inside the application.

Credits

Source Code

Thanks to the fine folks mentioned below for their contribution and the Mac developer crowd in general for providing a great community for creating wonderful products.

Template Artwork

Some BoinxTV templates use artwork by artists around the world that is licensed under Creative Commons.

Thanks

A big thank you to all of our seed and beta tester for making BoinxTV a great product! Thank you to our families and friends for supporting our work.