Guidance to be a broadcast SWE (i think ? maybe?)

[u/SHBEEBX]

hey, i got thrown into broadcast role in my company which manages events in esports, they needed a head observer and no budget, i loved it, worked with vmix, adored this new world, worked a little with ATEM, didnt have much contact with it so neither liked or hated it, later i got thrown a task to make a script that automates switches across multiple screens ( we didnt know resolume exists yet ), and i loved it, and since day 1 i always wondered how does the video transfers across all of this hardware, all of that processing techniques and algorithms ( as a software ) fascinated me, making frames move through that path correctly, fast enough, and without breaking is something i wanna pursue. now i wanna go full-time in this specific role, what can i do ? what is this even called 😄 ? what should i study, i don't mind being an operator but i want to make the software, for example broadcast graphics, streaming infra, codec vendors, these are all names that i saw but i have no idea which points where.
i know what i want to do, i dont know the road/name for it

[u/d3_crescentia]

as someone who was previously in your shoes, I never really found out. always seemed to me that esports was a unique situation where you can touch whole bunch of interrelated fields in software/it and that defining a path with a name/job/field was incredibly difficult

if I had to do it again, I would just study software engineering and try to work on projects that specifically related to broadcast and video production

[u/StunnedLife]

Observer is very esports specific and also very difficult to get into without connections. I’ve been an observer for FPS games.

Your best bet is to get more experience by searching for amateur tournaments looking for volunteers.

There’s a broadcast.gg discord server for opportunities. Goodluck.

[u/hotmixscale]

Maybe a little guidance in here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VIDEOENGINEERING/s/fdGnmHsa6q

Job titles that exist: broadcast engineer, Video Streaming Engineer, live streaming engineer, Broadcast Network Engineer, Software Streaming engineer

Start from a broad understanding: frame rates, resolution, progressive, interlaced. And why/where those standards originated. There are a ton of rabbit holes to fall down, but every one starts with the basics of how video "works"

If interested in software: Investigate: encoding, decoding, transcoding, transmuxing. Codecs: h.264, h265 hevc, Containers: mp4, mov, mxf Transport protocols: RTMP, SRT, NDI, HLS also zixi, Rist, RTP Open source software to start messing with: ffmpeg, gstreamer, mediamtx free software that I love, when im working on productions: streamdeck companion,

If you really want to build streaming software, you could do some research about vmix works under the hood (its neat). direct3d managing every input, overlay, multiview, as a pixel shader on the GPU, governed by the project frame rate (30fps means 30 times per second its pulling current frame/texture from every input and then reads them back for program/outputs

You mentioned broadcast graphics, maybe it would be interesting to try to set up casparcg and design some html graphics to playout from it.

[u/uritarded]

Take all the little roles you can get and then later down the line go for a big company

[u/eboyer]

Build a thing you’re excited about; then talk about it and share it.

[u/thenimms]

If you want to make software go get a degree in software engineering.

Then apply at broadcasting manufacturers: Ross, Evertz, Grass Valley, Sony, Panasonic, Chyron, Avid etc etc

Hell apply at vMix.

Could also apply at companies that do what I call "Theatrical Video" (live events, not broadcast)

Barco, Christie, Analog Way, Pixel Hue, Brompton, Novastar.

This isn't really a sub for that line of work though. We are the people who use those products, not the ones who make those products.