Thai Monastery Broadcasts Timeless Buddhist Teaching with TriCaster® and NDI®
Wat Na Pa Pong is a Theravada Buddhist monastery in Pathum Thani Province, Warin Chamrap, Thailand. It is situated northeast of Bangkok.
Leading Wat Na Pa Pong is the venerable Ajarn Kukrit Sothipalo. As Head of the Sangha, he strongly believes in learning, practicing, and proclaiming only from the words of the Buddha (also known as Buddhawajana). This principle is not an original idea but stems from the actual teaching that came from the Buddha himself when he told other monks to listen and learn only to the “discourses uttered by the Tathagata,” while at the same time not to listen to the “discourses uttered by the followers.”
People come to the temple from many cities, locally and globally, with followers from more than 30 countries. To better serve the growing interest in Buddhawajana, Wat Na Pa Pong has embraced modern technology in their strategies.
The www.buddha-net.com website maps to a growing network of Buddhists, both monks and laypersons. Frequent web broadcasts from www.watnapp.com allow followers to learn and practice
Buddhawajana from the Internet, no matter where they are. An iOS and Android app called E-Tipitaka enables quick search and differentiation between Buddhawajana and other Buddhist teachings that are combined in the P?li canon. There is also another app conveniently called Buddhawajana that features live broadcasts of Ven. Ajarn Kukrit’s daily teaching session, as well as digital collections of 10 books on Buddhawajana, MP3 files, and DVDs. Now anyone with a mobile phone or tablet can instantly read, listen, and watch Buddhawajana virtually from anywhere, at any time.
TRANSITION FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL BUDDHAWAJANA WITH NEWTEK & NDI®
In the past, Wat Na Pa Pong had used an analog system with a video camera, switcher and capture card for streaming. They had issues with image jitter during their live broadcast at times. They also needed more HDMI channels
BUDDHAWAJANA WITH NEWTEK & NDI®
When it came time to upgrade technology to ensure the quality of the broadcast programming, careful consideration went into a final decision. For their daily live streaming productions, Wat Na Pa Pong chose the NewTek TriCaster® TC1 with a compliment of NDI PTZ cameras. NDI is a high-performance video-over-IP standard that allows anyone to use real time, ultra-low latency video on existing gigabit networks. They are also using NewTek Connect Spark devices that convert HDMI and SDI signals into NDI. This allows users to get more use out of their older HDMI and SDI devices while still using the network as the main routing hub of video signals. These systems were donated by a pupil of the temple.
BUDDHAWAJANA REAL For the new set up, they are also using free-to-use NDI Tools downloadable from NDI.tv including NDI Scan Converter, NDI Studio Monitor, and NDI Virtual Input.
NDI Virtual Input enables users to send the screen output from the TriCaster to “Line Conference.” They also are using NDI-HX Capture for iOS, a $20 USD app that allows a live screen capture screen from an iOS device, in their case an iPad, to be integrated into their multicamera production as an alternative source. Similarly, the NDI-HX Camera App for iOS is also used that simply takes the camera output of an iOS device and sends it wirelessly over the network to be used as a live source. Now, Wat Na Pa Pong are using 100% NDI with 7 streaming destinations every day including three Facebook feeds, three YouTube channels, and one RTMP feed.
When Ajarn Kukrit travelled to Germany, he was able to remotely use Skype to feed their TriCaster back in Thailand and share the live stream in real time with less than one second delay.