4 ms·

Sofie: open-source web based system for automating live TV news production

378 points by rjmunro 1y ago

eddyg 1y ago
Very cool. You can even control the prompter using a Joycon! https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/features/prompter#control-using-nintendo-joycon-modejoycon https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/features/...
stephen_g 1y ago
Very cool they decided to build this and release it to the world instead of just buying an extremely expensive commercial system. The backend play out server is CasparCG which is also open-source [1] (they run their own fork, for stability reasons I expect). Another similar related automation system (shares some parts and libraries) is SuperConductor [2]. 1. https://github.com/CasparCG/server https://github.com/CasparCG/server 2. https://github.com/SuperFlyTV/SuperConductor https://github.com/SuperFlyTV/SuperConductor
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  Looks more practical, as when dealing with hardware access C/C++ is the only way to get the latency issues into tolerable playback stream formats. Cool that it also supports OBS Studio by the way =3
- gbraad 1y ago
  Was glad to see them use CasparCG, as it allows use of NDI.
tdhz77 1y ago
Cool, going to create my ai tv station.
chriscjcj 1y ago
As a live television newscast director in a major market, I would be very interested to see a feature comparison between this product and its main competitors: Ross OverDrive, Sony ELC, and Grass Valley Ignite. Due to the substantial complexity of these automation systems, they tend to have a lot of inertia. But if anything could drive a station group to make a change, the "free" part can be effective. I did take a look at the supported hardware (1). I think that's the pain point for many shops. Free open source production software is great, but being forced to choose form hardware products you don't prefer is a pretty tough tradeoff. Historically, I suppose that's been one of FOSS' big challenges. (1) https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/supported-devices https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/supported...
- delfinom 1y ago
  That's the thing though, this isn't really "free" software as much as open. NRK is funding it and created it for their use, that's cost money. They spent money on supporting the hardware they clearly had and wanted to for their production. Any other user with their own setups they want supported will have to spend money on developer time as well.
  - simonw 1y ago
    Free software has a well established meaning at this point, and it's not "didn't cost any money to produce". Looks like this is MIT licensed https://github.com/nrkno/Sofie-TV-automation https://github.com/nrkno/Sofie-TV-automation
    - delfinom 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - glass-z13 1y ago
        Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribute it and any adapted versions.
      - simtel20 1y ago
        You are trying to establish that the financial meaning of free software is the primary meaning, while the freedom aspect has been the primary meaning. You would do better to change your focus to searching for false claims of "no-cost" software or something rather than trying to undermine an established meaning that is already understood and widespread.
      - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
        Everyone starts out as a leech, as FOSS offers you freedom to behave in such manners. However, unless you support the community in your own way, than people are just along for the ride. Remember to try and be kind... even if you don't agree with your peers =3
fitsumbelay 1y ago
meteorjs' an interesting choice ...
- codetrotter 1y ago
  Meteor got a lot of attention and hype on HN a few years ago. Looks at Wikipedia article Well, 12 or 13 years ago probably actually.
- rjmunro 1y ago
  According to Google Trends meteor js was popular from about 2012 to 2018. Sofie was started in about 2018, so when Meteor was established enough to have all the kinks worked out, but still popular.
arboles 1y ago
Can you write real-time shaders in it?
- rjmunro 1y ago
  That's not what it does. You would have your real time shaders running on a server somewhere, and Sofie would activate them at the right moment in the show. It's a tool that lets you drag and drop news stories in to a rundown and it will automatically play them. The news stories may have parts that are read from a teleprompter, parts that are pre-recorded video, live parts from outside broadcasts, interviews, graphics that need to be shown etc. Those are mostly provided by services or hardware that Sofie controls, not that are part of the show. Sofie is an automation tool.
revskill 1y ago
Ruby code is always a joi to read.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Is joy vs joi a Ruby pun of some sort?
  - revskill 1y ago
    joi is a javascript validation library , haha.
hiatus 1y ago
How does this handle things like replays that are queued dynamically during airing? For instance on a talk show there may be occasions where the host wishes to replay a section of a guest interview or to pull up a clip to play while talking over it. Would the operator override an existing Part or updating a piece in a part? Typically this is handled live with EVS.
- myself248 1y ago
  From a skim of the docs, it looks like those are handled as "adlib pieces", and can be pulled from what's currently playing or from other buckets.
kfarr 1y ago
May seem a bit niche but man I wished we had this 20 years ago when trying to start a student TV station on a budget. The pro tools at the time were ridiculously expensive.
k1rcher 1y ago
How does one break into this industry? I recently started playing the video game Not For Broadcast and have fallen in love. I’m sure it’s a very romanticized and simplified experience but I’ve been having a blast at perfecting the “art.” Very cool coincidence to see this on the front page right after a sesh with the game.
- chneu 1y ago
  The answer for anything video production is: start making stuff. Nobody can see your product if you don't make it. You can't make good product without practice. So get practicing. You need reps.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- DidYaWipe 1y ago
  And when making that stuff, turn your camera the right way. The last thing we need is more door-shaped videos.
jesprenj 1y ago
Any recommendations to what similar FOSS could be used for a radio station?
infogulch 1y ago
Would Sofie work for producing live streams a la twitch? I've noticed most bigger streamers end up with a hodge podge of automations and integrations built around OBS which they have grown organically ever since they were small and built everything themselves. I wonder if this would be suitable upgrade.
- rjmunro 1y ago
  It could, but it's aimed at news style programmes, ingesting information from commercial news gathering systems and turning that into broadcasts. You can reorder the stories and make edits even while the program is live, and e.g. handle breaking news events interrupting your show. There's support for ingesting from Google sheets, and from a demo app, so you could use those, or develop your own ingest system to create the stories.
jlundberg 1y ago
If anyone happen to pass by Hudiksvall in Sweden, you’ll be able to get a live demo of this (ping me!). One of the core developers sits in the same office house as me. :)
detuks 1y ago
Has anyone tried it? I tried to set up a simple livestream a year ago and it was far from simple. It felt very hackish and documentation was lacking. I guess putting more time I would succeed in the end. Did ask if I could hire the developers to do setup for me, but didn't really get anywhere with it :/

378 points by rjmunro 1y ago

Very cool. You can even control the prompter using a Joycon! https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/features/prompter#control-using-nintendo-joycon-modejoycon https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/features/...

stephen_g 1y ago

Very cool they decided to build this and release it to the world instead of just buying an extremely expensive commercial system. The backend play out server is CasparCG which is also open-source [1] (they run their own fork, for stability reasons I expect). Another similar related automation system (shares some parts and libraries) is SuperConductor [2]. 1. https://github.com/CasparCG/server https://github.com/CasparCG/server 2. https://github.com/SuperFlyTV/SuperConductor https://github.com/SuperFlyTV/SuperConductor

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
Looks more practical, as when dealing with hardware access C/C++ is the only way to get the latency issues into tolerable playback stream formats. Cool that it also supports OBS Studio by the way =3
gbraad 1y ago
Was glad to see them use CasparCG, as it allows use of NDI.

tdhz77 1y ago

Cool, going to create my ai tv station.

chriscjcj 1y ago

As a live television newscast director in a major market, I would be very interested to see a feature comparison between this product and its main competitors: Ross OverDrive, Sony ELC, and Grass Valley Ignite. Due to the substantial complexity of these automation systems, they tend to have a lot of inertia. But if anything could drive a station group to make a change, the "free" part can be effective. I did take a look at the supported hardware (1). I think that's the pain point for many shops. Free open source production software is great, but being forced to choose form hardware products you don't prefer is a pretty tough tradeoff. Historically, I suppose that's been one of FOSS' big challenges. (1) https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/supported-devices https://nrkno.github.io/sofie-core/docs/user-guide/supported...

delfinom 1y ago
That's the thing though, this isn't really "free" software as much as open. NRK is funding it and created it for their use, that's cost money. They spent money on supporting the hardware they clearly had and wanted to for their production. Any other user with their own setups they want supported will have to spend money on developer time as well.
- simonw 1y ago
  Free software has a well established meaning at this point, and it's not "didn't cost any money to produce". Looks like this is MIT licensed https://github.com/nrkno/Sofie-TV-automation https://github.com/nrkno/Sofie-TV-automation
  - delfinom 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - glass-z13 1y ago
      Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribute it and any adapted versions.
    - simtel20 1y ago
      You are trying to establish that the financial meaning of free software is the primary meaning, while the freedom aspect has been the primary meaning. You would do better to change your focus to searching for false claims of "no-cost" software or something rather than trying to undermine an established meaning that is already understood and widespread.
    - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
      Everyone starts out as a leech, as FOSS offers you freedom to behave in such manners. However, unless you support the community in your own way, than people are just along for the ride. Remember to try and be kind... even if you don't agree with your peers =3

fitsumbelay 1y ago

meteorjs' an interesting choice ...

codetrotter 1y ago
Meteor got a lot of attention and hype on HN a few years ago. Looks at Wikipedia article Well, 12 or 13 years ago probably actually.
rjmunro 1y ago
According to Google Trends meteor js was popular from about 2012 to 2018. Sofie was started in about 2018, so when Meteor was established enough to have all the kinks worked out, but still popular.

arboles 1y ago

Can you write real-time shaders in it?

rjmunro 1y ago
That's not what it does. You would have your real time shaders running on a server somewhere, and Sofie would activate them at the right moment in the show. It's a tool that lets you drag and drop news stories in to a rundown and it will automatically play them. The news stories may have parts that are read from a teleprompter, parts that are pre-recorded video, live parts from outside broadcasts, interviews, graphics that need to be shown etc. Those are mostly provided by services or hardware that Sofie controls, not that are part of the show. Sofie is an automation tool.

revskill 1y ago

Ruby code is always a joi to read.

bee_rider 1y ago
Is joy vs joi a Ruby pun of some sort?
- revskill 1y ago
  joi is a javascript validation library , haha.

hiatus 1y ago

How does this handle things like replays that are queued dynamically during airing? For instance on a talk show there may be occasions where the host wishes to replay a section of a guest interview or to pull up a clip to play while talking over it. Would the operator override an existing Part or updating a piece in a part? Typically this is handled live with EVS.

myself248 1y ago
From a skim of the docs, it looks like those are handled as "adlib pieces", and can be pulled from what's currently playing or from other buckets.

kfarr 1y ago

May seem a bit niche but man I wished we had this 20 years ago when trying to start a student TV station on a budget. The pro tools at the time were ridiculously expensive.

k1rcher 1y ago

How does one break into this industry? I recently started playing the video game Not For Broadcast and have fallen in love. I’m sure it’s a very romanticized and simplified experience but I’ve been having a blast at perfecting the “art.” Very cool coincidence to see this on the front page right after a sesh with the game.

chneu 1y ago
The answer for anything video production is: start making stuff. Nobody can see your product if you don't make it. You can't make good product without practice. So get practicing. You need reps.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
DidYaWipe 1y ago
And when making that stuff, turn your camera the right way. The last thing we need is more door-shaped videos.

jesprenj 1y ago

Any recommendations to what similar FOSS could be used for a radio station?

infogulch 1y ago

Would Sofie work for producing live streams a la twitch? I've noticed most bigger streamers end up with a hodge podge of automations and integrations built around OBS which they have grown organically ever since they were small and built everything themselves. I wonder if this would be suitable upgrade.

rjmunro 1y ago
It could, but it's aimed at news style programmes, ingesting information from commercial news gathering systems and turning that into broadcasts. You can reorder the stories and make edits even while the program is live, and e.g. handle breaking news events interrupting your show. There's support for ingesting from Google sheets, and from a demo app, so you could use those, or develop your own ingest system to create the stories.

jlundberg 1y ago

If anyone happen to pass by Hudiksvall in Sweden, you’ll be able to get a live demo of this (ping me!). One of the core developers sits in the same office house as me. :)

detuks 1y ago

Has anyone tried it? I tried to set up a simple livestream a year ago and it was far from simple. It felt very hackish and documentation was lacking. I guess putting more time I would succeed in the end. Did ask if I could hire the developers to do setup for me, but didn't really get anywhere with it :/