VT Guest

An easy-to-use remote contribution app for anchors and speakers.

VT Guest is designed to enable remote anchors and speakers to contribute to a production, usually via a dedicated setup or shippable kit. A great example of how an entirely remote video production workflow was built for anchors contributing daily to a TV show is available in this case study.

VT Guest provides bi-directional connectivity between the contributor and the studio.

Unlike The Guest Link, the VT Guest application uses our SRT-based protocol and also supports GPU-powered encoders: this increases transmission reliability and streaming performance. Due to browser limitations, the web link is limited to the WebRTC protocol and CPU-based encoders.

VT Guest only works with a Partner license with the same ID as your license used in studio. See what is a Partner license here and how to create or obtain it here.

Preparing VT Guest to use at the speaker side

• Download the VT software package from the My Account section of the Web Control Panel

• Unpack it and delete your license file with a .JSON extension from the unpacked VT folder

• Put the partner license .JSON file into the unpacked VT folder

• Pack the folder and send it to your Guest

Please avoid sending folders with Video Transport apps over Google Drive or other cloud file hosting services unpacked. Some file systems can corrupt the files and the software may not work correctly after that.

VT Guest interface overview and description

Here is how the VT Guest looks like:

Control	Function
1	Access ID. Value required to receive the particular stream from the VT Publisher and send the Guest stream to the VT Receiver
2	Guest name. Name of this VT Guest instance - How it will appear in the list of sources in the studio's VT Receiver
3	Video Source that will be sent from the Guest side. The dropdown list of available video sources. You can use SDI, NDI, DirectShow(USB Video Cameras for example) devices, and MPLinks(Medialooks format) as video sources.
4	Audio source that will be sent from the Guest side. The dropdown list of the available audio sources.
5	Connection status. It can be in the three states. Explained here.
6	Start/Stop button. Starts or stops the feed from the Guest.
7	The bitrate of the stream coming from the Guest. Dropdown list where you can select the desired bitrate.
8	Echo Cancelation. Enables the echo cancelation function.
9	Fullscreen buttons. If you have more than one monitor in your setup it will be shown as FS1, FS2, etc.
10	Statistic panels. You can see the statistics of the connection like the one in VT Publisher and Receiver. Here is the explanation of the values
11,12	Native previews.VT Guest (upper) and Studio (lower)
13,14	Mute buttons. You can monitor Guest and Studio feed sound (muted by default). And also you can select channels (stereo pairs) that you want to hear from the studio.

VT Guest connection states

On-Hold. This state means that VT Guest has no connection to VT Receiver in studio.

Ready. This state means that VT Guest is connected to the VT Receiver, but Output is not started (in case of SDI, Virtual) or Output is started to NDI, but has no active connections.

Ready (NDI Connected). It means that VT Guest is connected to the VT Receiver, Output was started to NDI and NDI received by another app or device, but not broadcasted further.

On Air. It means that VT Guest is connected to the VT Receiver and Guest feed output to SDI, Virtual, NDI. In case of NDI it means that is broadcasted from device or app that did receive NDI output from the VT Receiver.

Using VT Guest

• Launch VT Publisher. Select the video source that you want to send to the remote guest as a return link. Click the “Start Publishing” button.

• Using the context menu of the selected channel, select “Copy Access ID”.

• Launch the VT Guest application on the required machine and choose the video and audio source you wish to contribute with and desired bitrate.

• Paste into the "Access Link/ID" field the value from the source in VT Publisher and hit "Start”.

• Launch the VT Receiver application.

Once done, the feed from VT Guest will be available in VT Receiver. A return feed will also be sent to VT Guest from VT Publisher.

The receiving side (such as a studio or MCR) is in control of the transmission parameters (protocol and latency can be set via the VT Receiver app).